The first section of the Kyiv bypass road will be built by the American company Bechtel. This could be the most expensive construction project in Ukraine's history

After analysing more than a thousand draft laws in 2021, ILI rightly called the exemption of the construction of the Great Kyiv Bypass Road from the Public Procurement Law one of the most expensive and corruption-prone laws of the year.

At the time, this meant that approximately UAH 85 billion would be given to a company that was selected without transparent and competitive bidding.

For comparison, this is more than 10% of all procurement that was successfully conducted in the Prozorro system by all budget customers in 2020.

Bechtel to build a bypass road

Recently, it became known that Ukravtodor has appointed the American company Bechtel to build the first section of the bypass road around Kyiv. The initial purchase price is UAH 5.5 billion.

Why is it initial? You will understand everything now. It seems that a large American company should be trustworthy. However, it would be too simple.

In short, Bechtel is not only a world leader in engineering, procurement and construction, as both the company and Ukrainian customers officially state. However, they are silent about other facts related to its activities.

According to Nashi Hroshi, the company is also the leader in the ranking of American construction companies in terms of fines imposed on it. We are talking about almost a billion dollars. At the same time, half of them are due to fraud in public procurement.

The company may become the most expensive construction project in history

The most important thing is that the choice of this company, given its previous experience, may turn out to be the most expensive construction in the country's history. Let me explain using the example of two countries that have ordered the services of this company.

The biggest sanctions imposed on Bechtel are related to the construction of the central tunnel in Boston, known as the Great Boston Tunnel. There are two facts that are most interesting to us in this story:

• The first is the money. The tunnel was supposed to be built for $2.2 billion. However, the problem is that during the construction process, the price increased 7 times to a record $14.6 billion. This made it the most expensive construction project in US history;
• The second is quality. After the ceiling collapsed in the tunnel, which led to the death of one of the drivers, 242 dangerous fasteners were found.

For this, the company paid almost half a billion dollars in fines. Do you know why? Because the US has a system of accountability. In Ukraine, we have serious problems with this. Let's just hope that the perpetrators are not aware of this and will not try to abuse it.

Romania has suffered even more

There are customers of this company who are even less fortunate than the Bostonians. When ordering the Transylvanian highway, the Romanian government had no idea that it would be called the most expensive road in the world.

The story is very similar - the initial amount of 2.2 billion for the construction of 415 kilometres of road has increased 5 times and has become the most expensive road in the world.

However, Romania is not the United States and could not afford such costs. Therefore, for 1.25 billion euros, it settled on 54 kilometres of road. How about one kilometre of motorway for 24 million euros?

The reason for the price hike was hardly justified by objective needs. Not long ago, the company's management was convicted of extortion and kickbacks worth millions of dollars.

The company had previously paid tens of millions in fines for price gouging and billing for work that was not performed. It is surprising that our government customers did not raise any questions about this history of the company.

By the way, it is interesting that the initial cost of all three projects - the Boston Tunnel, the Transilvania Highway, and the Kyiv Circular Road - is almost the same: just over 2 billion.

However, will we be able to avoid the sad fate of other countries and not get into another $10 billion overhead? We hope that we can, and that Ukrainian officials will conscientiously control both the quality and cost of construction.

It would be naïve to believe that only unscrupulous contractors profit from such projects, while customers simply suffer from unreasonable price increases without receiving any kickbacks.

What makes us different is the war

What makes us different from the US and Romania? The war. At this time, every hryvnia, not to mention tens of billions, means weapons, helmets and the lives of our military, which ultimately equals the existence of the country as a whole. Given that 10 times more money was spent on road construction than on the army, at least now corruption appetites should be curbed.

You and I must remember that we must closely monitor both the legislative ideas of our elected representatives and every penny spent. After all, those in power do not operate with their own money, but with ours. Let's remember that politicians come and go, and we all have to live with the consequences of the laws they pass.

Source: Channel 24