The first consultations with the market on civil construction works procurement held – the Agency for Restoration jointly with BOC and KSE

On May 19, the State Agency for Restoration and Infrastructure Development of Ukraine jointly with the Kyiv School of Economics and the Business Ombudsman Council held open consultations with the market on procurement in civil construction.
The practice of consulting the market introduced by the Agency, is an important step towards effective procurement and timely projects implementation to reconstruct civilian facilities affected by the full-scale invasion of russia.
Almost a hundred people with experience in civil engineering participated online and offline.
Event speakers were Mustafa Nayem, Head of the Restoration Agency, Andrii Ivko, First Deputy Head of the Restoration Agency, and Oleksandr Nakhod, Head of the procurement system development project of the Agency. The event was moderated by Liliia Lakhtionova, Director for research and analysis in public procurement at the KSE Procurement Improvement Center.
The Head of the Recovery Agency, Mustafa Nayem, emphasized that the most important thing was not to narrow the market, but to ensure that the maximum number of qualified companies that can deliver results could be involved in the recovery.
During the event, the Agency’s team presented the key principles and requirements it was going to apply when conducting procurement procedures to market players, in particular:
◾proposals regarding unified approaches to procurement procedures,
◾ qualification criteria projects and requirements for potential contractors,
◾key terms and conditions of contracts, etc.
As a partner of the Restoration Agency, the Business Ombudsman Council also took part in the preparation for market consultations. The Business Ombudsman Council was represented at the event by investigators Maryna Pavlenchyk and Olena Chorna — they outlined the “bottlenecks” that could create risks in interaction of the state and business in the course of implementing recovery projects. That is why the Business Ombudsman Council’s top priority under the Memorandum with the Agency is to promote the establishment of constructive and honest relations to avoid malpractice on both sides.
Currently, the Agency is working on finalizing the procurement process requirements and relevant documents drafts. All event attendees received proposals from the Agency on qualification requirements discussed at the meeting and would have the opportunity to give their comments. After that, the Restoration Agency experts will process the comments received and present the final version of the documentation. The next stage will be tender procedures launch and restoration projects practical implementation.