Mota-Engil close to winning Iberian duel to build country’s largest hospital
Lisbon East Hospital is the largest public work of the last decade. The jury's preliminary report gives advantage to Mota-Engil and candidates have already responded.
Mota-Engil is ahead in the public tender for construction and concession of the Lisbon East Hospital (HLO), the largest public work in the country in the last decade, with a base value of €334.5 million. The jury has already finished technical analysis of the proposals from Mota-Engil and Spain’s Sacyr, the two finalists, and the group led by Gonçalo Moura Martins was placed in the lead, according to ECO.
After the responses from the two finalist candidates, whose deadline ended this Thursday, the official homologation of the result and awarding of the work is expected soon. The new Lisbon hospital, to be located in Marvila in a total area of 180,000 square metres, will have a minimum capacity of 875 beds and will replace six hospitals in the Lisbon area (S. José, Curry Cabral, Maternidade Alfredo da Costa, Estefânia, Santa Marta and Capuchos).
The two competitors reached the final phase of the tender for submission of a BAFO (Best and Final Offer), after a race that had eight competing consortiums. Mota-Engil and Sacyr delivered the final proposals in September and then entered a competitive negotiation process, which involved price and technical model. Jornal de Negócios reported, in August 2021, that Sacyr’s last proposal would be the most advantageous from an economic point of view, but that of Mota-Engil the most robust from a technical point of view.And weighing up the two factors would give the Spaniards an advantage. Now, according to ECO, Mota-Engil has come forward in the overall assessment, including a reduction in the operation’s value. Jornal de Negócios reported in this Thursday’s edition that Mota-Engil’s proposal is around €257 million, a value that ECO has also confirmed, while Sacyr’s proposal is €244 million. Despite this difference,the assessment of all indicators put Mota-Engil ahead of the tender.
After the ‘one-on-one’ negotiations, and weighing the price and technical project factors, the jury of the tender, led by Rita Cunha Leal, consultant of the Technical Unit for Project Monitoring (UTAP), decided in favour of Mota-Engil’s proposal. But until the publication of this article, it was not possible to determine the final value of Mota-Engil’s bid, led by Gonçalo Moura Martins, which is lower than the initial proposal of around €333 million. What is known is that the State will have an annual charge of around €16 million throughout the contract period, which will be 27 years after construction, now adjusted to the new values.
In the order that followed the launch of the public tender for the new Lisbon East Hospital in 2017, the government stated that the “results obtained with the economic and financial study contained in the Final Report” that supports the decision to build “allow us to conclude, with no doubt, that the project for implementing the LCH, replacing the current six hospital units that make up the CHLC, has a very significant potential for future savings for the State”. On the other hand, “the estimated savings with the construction of the Clinical LCH does not only translate into financial aspects, but also, with significant relief, in the improvement of accessibility and quality of care that will result from the existence of a modern and appropriate structure for the provision of health care in the XXI century.
With the new hospital, says the government, there will be a more adequate response “to the increase in outpatient care and the adjustment of the healthcare model to new needs and techniques in health, providing, namely, a greater weight of the performance in predictive and preventive medicine.
