A tender for the year 2019 for an administrative position of the Management of the ENAIRE Foundationdependent on the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, included as “author” of the specifications the person who was later awarded, IS M., which was the only candidate who appeared in the process.
It so happens that this person appears as “author” of several documents of the aforementioned Management even before he obtained the position, whose functions contemplated precisely the writing of files and specifications.
This is demonstrated by an investigation carried out by La Nueva España and El Periódico de España thanks to a computer tool for massive analysis of tenders developed by data scientists Manuel J. García Rodríguez and José Carlos Montes Luna.
The aforementioned tool tracks the computer documents in PDF or Word format, which are the ones that the administration usually uses to articulate its contracts and that leave a trace through the so-called metadata. Its traceability allows knowing the name of the teams that have created or modified the documents.
The events date back to December 20, 2019, in the middle of Christmas, when the Foundation of which is the manager of air navigation in Spain took out the tender in a simplified open process to a post “supporting the administration department of the ENAIRE Foundation”.
The technical specifications document, created by the aforementioned ISM, as it appears in the metadata, was generated that same December 20, 40 minutes before the announcement of the process was published.
The functions of the position, which had a base budget for three years of 81,000 euros without taxes and 98,010 with taxes, consisted of performing “the administrative management corresponding to a foundation of the State Public Sector and applying its specific regulations”.
Among the services required of the contractor was that of drafting and preparing contract files, requesting budgets and follow-ups, and drafting technical specifications and clause specifications.
Also among his responsibilities was the dumping of the information and documentation of the Public Sector Contracting Platform or the drafting of the Regulatory Bases for the concessions.
According to the award document to which this newspaper has had access through the Public Procurement Portal and which is dated January 10, 2020, ISM’s offer, the only one that was presented, ostensibly improved the established budget.
The total amount offered by her was 77,727 euros (without taxes) and 94,050 (with taxes). That is, 4,000 euros cheaper than the budget established as a ceiling by the contracting body. The offer received highest rating both in the curriculum, as in the economic offer or the Descriptive Memory of services to be provided.
“The award proposal is accepted since the offer submitted meets the technical and economic requirements of the specifications,” says the award document for a process to which only this offer was submitted. The duration of the contract was one year, counting from its formalization, and when it expired, it could be extended up to two times, up to a maximum of three years. The budget of the specifications was, in fact, for the three years.
two renewals
As verified by the investigation of the Iberian Press media based on the data of the Public Sector Contracting Platform on this file, with number PAS FE-03/2020, the contract was renewed twiceon January 16, 2021 and January 27, 2022.
At the first renewal the total amount rose, being the maximum established by the offer: 98,010 euros (with taxes), 4,000 euros more than the previous contract. Another detail that draws the attention of this contest is that ISM appears in the metadata as the author of numerous tenders after winning the procedure, but also before.
Thus, it appears as the editor of several specifications created on December 23 and 24, 2019 by the Management of the ENAIRE Foundation to tender “Services of transport, assembly and disassembly of works of art”, “Digital communication” or “Design work, layout and final artwork for the online and offline dissemination of the Foundation’s activities”.
In contact with this newspaper, ENAIRE sources reply that said hiring complies with “the law” and it was communicated “to the General Intervention of the State”. According to a spokesperson for the entity, the Foundation, which has eight employees, but only one administrative employee, has occasionally resorted to external hiring “always justified” when the workload “has been very high”, especially for administration tasks. .
In fact, IFS had already worked since December 2018 for the Foundation as a freelancer to manage the Public Sector Contracting Platform and among its functions had been “drafting bidding documents” that allows “speed up work”. From the Foundation they maintain that the “only editor and person in charge” of the aforementioned statement was the Director of Administration, Enrique Torres, who was the one who “knew the needs of the department” and “used the usual templates”.
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A) Yes, attribute to an “administrative circumstance” that the awardee appears as the author in the specifications, “Since she did not have the responsibility, neither for the decision nor for the content of the specifications, since it was limited to a merely administrative work of transcription and upload of the specifications to the Platform”, they insist from the Foundation.
In the entity they also explain that in the extension of the second year there was an increase in the money received “because he charged an additional bill” for an “extraordinary” job he did at the Foundation to organize a Symposium in December 2021. “This bill for this occasional work does not correspond to a salary increase”, they maintain about those 4,000 euros more that the successful bidder received with respect to the previous year and that curiously made her reach the maximum salary cap that the award contemplated in the first term.