Infrastructure And Construction Diamonds Awarded For The Fourth Time!

Four discussion panels, twenty eight speakers, almost seven hours of discussion, and eleven winners of our prestigious statuettes – this is just a brief description of the 9th edition of the “Polish Infrastructure and Construction” conference and the formal gala of “Infrastructure and Construction Diamonds”, which took place on February 8 at The Westing hotel in Warsaw.

The conference’s Guest of Honor was Marek Chodkiewicz, Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Infrastructure, who gave a speech on the implementation of the National Roads Construction Program for the years 2014-2023. “We currently have over 3.5 thousand km of expressways and motorways, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us. Unfortunately, we will not be able to implement all tasks included in the program, so our priority is to connect the most important investments into a coherent road network” – said the Deputy Minister.

The main topic of the first panel was the future of road investments and the effectiveness of public–private partnerships. The panel was moderated by Anna Flaga-Martynek (WKB Wierciński, Kwieciński, Baehr law firm). Iwona Stępień-Kotlarek, Deputy General Director of National Roads and Motorways, began the panel with a strong statement that there are no companies on the Polish market which would be able to face the challenges associated with the implementation of very large contracts and organization of the entire investment process, hence the tendency to create consortia. Jerzy Wacławczyk (Strabag) talked about the cooperation between ordering parties and contractors, pointing out that, regardless of the public procurement law, these relationships are good and the implementation of a single European document for public procurement and the announced digitization will constitute a positive change facilitating cooperation. Mr. Wacławczyk was accompanied by Deputy Minister Chodkiewicz, who stated that digitization is a key condition for improving communication between contractors and ordering parties and facilitating the submission of tender offers. Paweł Lider (Eurovia Polska) talked about good practices for the effective modernization of infrastructure with the use of PPP, based on the example of investments implemented in Slovakia and Germany. “PPP is an immense opportunity for the development of infrastructural projects, and it seems necessary to increase the involvement of private capital” – said Andrzej Gienieczko (Egis Projects Polska). Krzysztof Mleczak (Exito Broker) mentioned bank and insurance guarantees as a form of securing against risk associated with the implementation of infrastructural investments. According to him, the insurance market constitutes a good alternative to banks. Robert Dębecki (KUKE) continued on the issue of financial security and pointed out that the number of bank and insurance guarantees is increasing – together with the growing awareness of their users, which results in a higher number of claims.

 Registered video material-Panel 1: Infrastructure today and tomorrow