Beit Shean Municipality: Is the tender for the design of the cultural center in the city sold in advance? (Photo: official website, Beit Shean Municipality)
Walla Real Estate disclosure:
Fear that the tender for the design of the Cultural Center in Beit Shean is sold in advance.
According to the Association of Architects and City Builders, the representative professional body of Israeli architects, the terms of the tender for the design of the Cultural Center in Beit Shean are clearly unreasonable. The speed with which the committee seeks to end the tender and conditions The unusual thresholds in it raise concerns among the members of the association that this is a tender that is tailored to the size of a bidder who has already been selected by the committee in advance.
The Association of Architects and City Builders, the representative professional body of Israeli architects, issued a warning letter to the Beit Shean Municipality in recent days
through D. Uri Alder, from the Yarkoni office of Segev Alder & Co.
Erna Angel, chairman of the Architects' Association: "I am asking the committee to ease the threshold conditions" (Photo: Architects' Association)
In the letter, sent to the Beit Shean Municipality Tenders Committee, the Beit Shean Mayor, Mr. Jackie Levy, and the Municipality Auditor, CPA Mor Cohen, the association refers to the tender published by the Beit Shean Municipality on Tuesday, November 29, 2022, to locate architects for the design of a cultural center in the city, In the lottery's budget and at an estimated cost of NIS 38 million, for the development of approximately 2000 square meters of built-up area and landscape development.
According to the association, the tender was published on a tight schedule, which radically deviates from what is customary in tenders, and in fact requires the interested architect to submit his proposal together with a complete set of plans at the level of a permit plan, a bill of quantities and a full estimate within only one week.
For comparison, the association points out, planning a private house with an area of 100 square meters takes about two weeks at the very least, so the tender requirement is absurd and raises difficult questions regarding the conduct of the tender.
If this is not enough, the committee requests that within this limited time frame, the bidder will attach to the tender documents a customer satisfaction questionnaire, which must be sent to the customers to fill out and receive back, a CPA's confirmation of financial turnover and documentation for participating in competitions and winning prizes. However, instead of holding a competition itself, As it demands from the bidders in the tender, it holds a flash tender with an improbability that screams to the sky.
More in Walla!
How does work contribute to mental and physical health in the third age?
In collaboration with the lottery
The municipality in response: In every tender there are threshold conditions that limit professionals - these are their purpose
Erna Angel, the chairman of the Association of Architects
, stated that "the goal of a local authority is to bring about the well-being of its residents, among other things, through proper architectural plans.
In this case, not only does the municipality not use an architectural competition, which is the recommended way to improve the quality of planning, but it publishes a flash tender with strict threshold conditions, thereby preventing many architects from competing and reducing the offers it will receive.
In the letter, the association asks the municipal auditor to instruct the municipality to extend the tender by three weeks, in order to allow as many architects as possible to prepare the plans and submit their proposals.
In addition, since only a small number of architectural firms in Israel meet all of the threshold conditions when combined, the committee is requested to ease the threshold conditions."
The Beit Shean Municipality, in response, rejects the claims:
"We are proud to promote an unprecedentedly important project of establishing a cultural hall for the residents of Beit Shean after decades. The time has come for the residents of Beit Shean to have a worthy and respected cultural hall and house. The tender schedules comply with the municipal regulations on tenders, legally approved when the professional requirements were formulated by the city engineer In order to win high-quality proposals for architectural design.
" "We reject outright the claims made in the letter and emphasize that the timetables were set in the tender due to the commitment to meet the timetables of the call, for raising the budget for the project.
As a result, the authority directed the tender to offices that had previously planned a cultural center and already have prepared plans of a similar size.
This is an ethical, professional and legitimate requirement.
Naturally, every tender has threshold conditions that are suitable for the subject and the situation and limit some of the relevant professionals.
After all, this is the purpose of threshold conditions."
Furthermore, the municipality claims that "it is clear that the drafters of the letter are not knowledgeable, intentionally or unintentionally, about the current tender process and about important facts and answers to clarification questions published by us, including the postponement of the final submission date by several days, the reduction in the scope of the financial turnover and the number of employees employed in the planning office."
Real estate
Tags
real estate
Beit Shean
