Construction, Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Railways, Real Estate, Transport

"The contracting authority has itself regulated the procedure for conducting negotiations both in the competition announcement as well as in the terms, and pursuant to it, negotiations are only held with the winner. Talks with the authors who placed second and third can only be launched if the negotiations with the winner fail. At this point, neither of the parties has announced that the negotiations have come to a halt," the Association of Architects said.

The architects' association noted that when it comes to architectural design competitions, according to good practice used in the whole Europe, talks are launched with the winner, not the runner-up or the third prize recipient. The rules laid down by both the Architects' Council of Europe (ACE) and the International Union of Architects (UIA) say that the implementation of the winning design is the primary objective of such a competition.

The Estonian Association of Architects finds that Rail Baltic Estonia seeking to retroactively change the rules of the competition for the design of the Parnu terminal sets a precedent that diminishes the reliability of Estonian architecture competitions.

Rail Baltic Estonia has an obligation to adhere to the documents serving as basis for the competition, and ignoring them would mean that Rail Baltic Estonia does not follow the principles of organizing public procurement stipulated by the law, the association said.

The online news portal of public broadcaster ERR reported on Friday that four years and six months after the architectural design competition for the Rail Baltic terminal in Parnu was concluded, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications discovered that in addition to the winner, talks should also be held with the architects who placed second and third. 

In early 2015, a design by Pluss architectural bureau entitled "Water Strider" was declared the winner of the competition. Both the Parnu city government as well as the ministry decided to move forward with the project.

Last week, however, the company was informed that in addition to it, two more businesses will be included in the talks -- the winners of second and third prize, because according to the coordinator of the Rail Baltic project in Estonia, Kristjan Kaunissaare, Rail Baltic Estonia is obligated to do so by the Public Procurement Act.

Kaunissaare said that the ministry had only recently discovered the corresponding section in the Public Procurement Act. So far, architecture competitions have been carried out in accordance with guidelines by the architects' association, pursuant to which the winner of the competition is the one with whom negotiations are launched. w