A unique science and technology park is emerging in Kupittae of Turku. On Monday, the city will decide on the 150 million euro project, in which it is involved both as a customer and as another participant in the tender. Public law professor warns of pitfalls.
Turku on Monday, the city government will probably decide on the most significant construction project in the city’s near future. The choice is sweet, because the city is both the customer and the provider at the same time.
Turku has been preparing a large technology and business area for Kupitta for a long time under the name Turku Tiedepuisto. On Monday, based on the mayor’s proposal, the city government will choose a partner with whom the project will begin to be implemented.
There are two partner candidates in the tender. The second consortium includes SRV Rakennus Oy and Turku Teknologiakiinteistöt Oy, among others. The second group includes, for example, YIT Suomi Oy and Lundén Architecture Oy.
Turku The main owner of the technology properties is the Swedish real estate investment company Hemsö. It owns a little more than half of the company. The rest is owned by the city of Turku, either directly or through the Turku University of Applied Sciences, which it owns. This also puts the tender in an interesting light.
“Municipalities today own one or the other, so situations like this can arise,” says the professor of public law Tomi Voutilainen from the University of Eastern Finland.
According to him, Turku now has an emphasized obligation to ensure that competitors are treated equally.
“And an outsider must also be able to verify this,” Voutilainen points out.
On Monday, the city government will discuss the issue with a secret additional list. The tender documents will become public after the procurement decision.
According to Voutilainen, there should not be much margin of discretion in such tenders. It means that when choosing the winner, one should not emphasize things that are difficult to measure.
“If there is a margin of discretion, it’s easy to end up in market court,” warns Voutilainen.
“Jurisprudence has shown that if the discretionary margin is too wide, operators cannot reliably predict on what basis the choice will actually be made.”
Mayor Minna Arve (kok) says that in choosing the winner, the weight of quality criteria is 80 percent and the influence of price 20 percent. The quality is affected by, among other things, the “quality of the overall plan” and the cooperation ability and alliance expertise of the provider.
“All of these have been scored and based on them, one of these works has been selected as the winner.”
In the Kupitta kätti project, a concrete deck will be built over the highway and the train track. Thus, the areas of Kupitta and Itäharju will expand into a unified Science Park. The photo shows another of the competition entries that made it to the end.
Kupitta’s project the city is building a concrete deck over the highway near the Kupitta railway station. The vocational school campus will be in the same connection.
The concrete cover ties together Turku’s three big plans for the near future. It connects the Kupitta area with the Itäharju area on the other side of the highway, which together with Kupitta are being planned as a new attraction factor for the city. Turku hopes that in the future the Tunni train will transport experts to Kupitta, and the tram will handle traffic within the city.
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The tender started a year ago. The total price of the project for the city is around 150 million euros. The current bidders were invited to take part in the follow-up investigation last February.
Turku’s highest official, head of office Tuomas Heikkinen represents the city in the Board of Technology Properties. According to Voutilainen, this sets requirements for considering issues of disability.
“As an official, a member of the board of directors must refrain from participating in the handling of the matter in any way, if an obvious obstacle situation is forming in the procurement matter,” Voutilainen formulates.
According to Arve, the city has ensured that the “firewalls” of transparency work.
“Chief of Chancellery Heikkinen has not participated in the preparation of the matter in any way. It has been very carefully taken care of. That is why I will present the matter on Monday.”
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