Tender for connecting ski resorts canceled again

The Capital Projects Directorate will have to announce a third tender for the development of a conceptual design and main project for the reconstruction of the Jasikovac road to the base settlement of Cmiljača, after the last one was canceled yesterday following an appeal by the Podgorica-based company “Indel Inženjering”. The aim of this 10,5-kilometer-long route is to connect the Cmiljača ski center and the Žarski ski resort, and the work would be done on a “design and build” basis.

At the beginning of April, the Capital Projects Administration selected the bid of the Bijelo Polje-based company "Konstruktor Group" worth 14.132.800 euros as the most favorable bid in this tender, but there was a possibility of appealing that decision, which "Indel Inženjering" took advantage of.

The decision to annul the tender was made by the Commission for the Protection of Rights in Public Procurement Procedures, as they found that the Capital Projects Administration violated the rules of procedure when clarifying the tender documentation of 11 February, when they amended and supplemented the deadline for the performance of the work. In addition, they found that the Administration failed to make a confirmation of the submission of bid guarantees and to attach that confirmation, along with the minutes of the bid opening, as a scanned copy to the Montenegrin Public Procurement System (CEJN) on the same day.

"In particular, the established material violation of the rules of the public procurement procedure cannot be remedied by any subsequent actions of the contracting authority, because all deadlines from Article 94 of the Law on Public Procurement (LPP) for amending and/or supplementing the tender documentation in question have expired, which constitutes a legal reason for the annulment of the public procurement procedure in question in its entirety, based on Article 195, paragraph 2 of the LPP, which stipulates that in the event of a material violation of the procedure referred to in this paragraph, the Commission for the Protection of Rights will annul the decision, or part of the procedure or the entire public procurement procedure," the Commission's decision states.

The second-ranked company in the tender was “Eurozox”, followed by “Indel Engineering”. The companies “Bemax” and “AG UNS Architectural and Construction Institute” were excluded from this procedure due to incorrectly completed statements.

This was the second tender for this job, and it was announced at the end of last year and lasted until the beginning of March, while its estimated value was 16,9 million euros. The first tender was announced in November last year, had the same value and was canceled in mid-December 2024, after the Administration determined that the tender documentation needed to be changed.

Ski center Cmiljača is 14 kilometers from Bijelo Polje, and is located in Bjelasica. Ski resort Žarski is located on the northwestern part of the same mountain, territorially it belongs to Mojkovac, and work on it began in 2020. The state has been planning for some time to valorize these locations in the north and connect them, while future ski centers will be managed by the state company "Skijališta Crne Gore".

This project plans to reconstruct the road, build intersections, access roads, reconstruct buildings, repair landslides, etc., and it is also stated that the project also needs to include sidewalks and a bicycle path. The sidewalks and these paths must be separated, both on the left and right sides of the road, in order to enrich the tourist offer of the Cmiljača mountain center. In addition, the project must also plan for local lighting on this section.

The designer will also have to submit a study of simultaneous power and the number of metering points, in order to obtain the necessary conditions from the Montenegrin Electricity Distribution System (CEDIS). The reconstruction project of this route received urban and technical conditions from the Bijelo Polje Secretariat for Construction in 2014.