“We have been waging a real battle for some time now against the assignment of engineering and architecture services to Italian universities”, declares Eng. Andrea De Maio, President of Inarcassa Foundationcommenting on the ruling of the TAR Catania which accepted the appeal presented by the Order of Architects PPC of the province of Enna and by the Inarcassa Foundation, in relation to the assignment of the design services for the urban park of Enna Bassa, to the Kore University of Enna, for an amount of 122 thousand euros.
Design services: TAR says no to assignment to university bodies
While waiting to read the reasons for the sentence – not yet published by the Administrative Court – De Maio underlines his satisfaction for a decision that definitively clarifies the impossibility of assigning design tasks to Universities, removing them from the public procurement market.In our country the evasive recourse to the instrument of the agreement between Administrations for the direct assignment of engineering and architecture services. It is a serious phenomenon that affects several Universities and their consortia, or non-profit entities, which can use public funds and resources to perform engineering and architecture services without even being required to win a contract in compliance with the rules of the Contract Code”.
The President of the Foundation highlights the dichotomy between the freelancer who, in addition to paying taxes and contributions, supports the costs of managing the studio and participating in tenders, while on the other side there is a person who, instead of pursuing exclusively higher education and research purposes, in implementation of art. 33 of the Constitution, can, also taking advantage of public resources, carry out planning activities in open illegitimate competition
with freelancers and engineering companies.
And he issues a warning: “We will remain vigilant, however, because in recent years several public, parastatal and even Third Sector entities have attempted to enter the technical services market. We have always denounced and opposed these deviations that not only undermine the principles of transparency and competition, but also raise enormous doubts about the quality of the planning offered by entities responsible for doing something completely different”,
concludes the President of the Inarcassa Foundation.
Direct assignment to university bodies is a violation of the Procurement Code
Of the same opinion the President of the Order of Architects, Planners, Landscapers and Conservationists of Enna, arch. Sebastiano Fazziwhich specifies that the direct assignment of engineering and architecture services to Universities, in addition to being a clear violation of the law by bodies that have completely different purposes, such as research and teaching, is almost always accompanied by procedural defects, so serious as to justify legal action.In fact, Italian universities are not even mentioned in art. 66 among the economic operators who can perform engineering and architectural services.”. This is demonstrated by the fact that the resisting parties have not been able to provide any proof that the University of Kore possesses the requisites required by law.
Fazzi also concludes by reiterating the commitment of the Order of Architects of Enna “to monitor the territory and in relation to this matter, it is available to collaborate with the Municipality of Enna to define the correct procedure to undertake to complete a project destined to change the face of the lower part of the city”.
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