The General Accounting Office of the State is promoting an amendment to the procedure concerning public works tenders, in order to shorten the time process for examining appeals before the Revision Authority.
At the same time, regulations are being promoted that will contribute to reducing the number of appeals they achieve and the start time of the construction works of the various projects.
As "F" has already written, based on the reports of the Tender Review Authority, the average time to complete the process of examining an appeal is 107 days (3.6 months). However, there are also cases where the time for issuing a decision varies between 41 – 159 days, i.e. between 1.4 – 5.3 months.
The relevant proposal promoted by the General Accounting Office has been forwarded to the Legal Service for legislative processing.
According to information from "F", one of the provisions of the promoted change in the procedure for examining appeals provides for an examination of all the reasons invoked by the company appealing before the Revision Authority, which in many cases is not the case with the current procedure.
Specifically, today, if a tenderer registers an appeal, citing, for example, ten reasons why it considers that the decision of the Contracting Authority (i.e. the State service that announces the tender) should be annulled and the Reviewing Authority considers that the applicant is right from the first reason invoked, then it is decided to annul the decision to award the tender. This means that the Revision Authority does not examine the other reasons invoked by the tenderer who appealed before the Revision Court, since it is essentially considered that this is a waste of time, given that the appeal succeeded from the examination of the first ground invoked by the tenderer.
This is well-founded, but at the same time it means that the public service that had announced the tender will repeat the procedure to award the tender to whoever it considers to meet the criteria. However, this leaves the door open for the registration of a new appeal in which grounds that were not examined in the original appeal will also be put forward. This entails, in turn, the consumption of new time for the examination of the reasons that had not been examined in the initial appeal and consequently the extension of the procedure for the award of the tender and the start of the construction works.
However, the General Accounting Office indicates that in the last two years the number of appeals they succeed before the Revision Authority has decreased. Specifically, according to the Accounting Office, in 2025 they achieved one in six appeals registered, while this year (to date) they achieved one in ten appeals.
However, the reasons why the appeals before the Revision Authority succeed are also interesting. According to the Review Authority itself, appeals usually succeed for the following reasons:
> The ground for exclusion of a tender is considered incorrect (either because it is not provided for in the terms of the tender, or because the Contracting Authority misinterpreted the terms of the tender, the relevant regulations or the relevant legislation, or because the Contracting Authority does not clearly define the terms and specifications in the tender documents, resulting in problems in their interpretation).
> The minutes of the meetings of the bodies involved in a tender procedure required by laws and regulations are not kept, with the result that either the reason for taking a decision is not recorded, or this reasoning is incomplete to the point that the reason for the exclusion or not of a tenderer is not specified.
Of course, the question arises as to why, after 20 years of tenders, the contracting authorities continue to make mistakes in the terms of the tenders or in the procedure, and so on, which leaves the tenderers (who lose the tenders) fertile ground to register appeals and win them.
