Jury recommends first stretch of Porto-Lisbon high-speed rail link to be awarded to Mota-Engil

An independent jury examining competitive tenders for works to do the first stretch of the Porto-Lisbon high speed rail link has recommended that the Sino-Portuguese construction company Mota-Engil and its partners be awarded the contract to complete the first stretch of a high-speed rail link between Porto and Lisbon in what has effectively become a direct award since no other consortiums uploaded their bids onto the public contract website.

Mota-Engil is heading the consortium Lusolav to complete the works between Porto and Oiã, which includes the companies Teixeira Duarte, Casais, Alves Ribeiro and Conduril.

According to business daily Negócios, the Mota-Engil consortium was the only one to be validated because it uploaded its tender on the public contract website.

From the evaluation, “it appears that the only proposal presented obtained a manifestly positive evaluation for the sub-factors B1 – Campanhã Station and B3 Ponte evaluation, having obtained the maximum score in more than half of the basic evaluation sub-factors that comprise them”,  states an evaluation document.

The overall score of 4.448 assigns a higher relative weighting of 70% to the price factor. “The financial evaluation of the bid was the lowest presented, as a Net Present Value (“NPV”), with reference to December 2023, of €1,661,362,811.55 – very close to the reference base price”, the jury indicates.

The jury has therefore decided to “propose its award to the body competent for the decision to hire”.

However, it warns that “bearing in mind the fact that only one proposal has been submitted in a timely manner, it is necessary to give special consideration to the added value of the award of the only proposal submitted, to be carried out by the members of the Government responsible for the areas of finance and the project in question”.