"Public procurement for the construction, management and care of green areas. Regulatory framework, procedural aspects, problems, comparative experiences, guidelines and best practices "is the title of the conference that will take place in Milan on May 9 (from 10 to 14) at the San Paolo auditorium in via Giotto 36.
The conference is aimed at administrators, executives and officials of public administrations, managers of private companies operating in the field of public procurement, trade associations, professionals and companies in the supply chain of the green in general.
About 300 participants are expected, coming from all over Italy.
The organizers explain: "The will is to highlight the technical and organizational problems of public administrations in banning and managing tenders for the maintenance of green areas, highlighting good management practices and virtuous cases, providing possible solutions".
In the first session the speakers will bring their experience on the subject, while the second session will focus on the legal and administrative aspects of public procurement.
It is the first of a series of initiatives, involving the involvement of the various companies in the green supply chain, to activate synergies and dialogue with institutions and bodies of reference, to try to solve the enormous problems concerning "green" tenders which, as known, they negatively affect the quality of the urban green nullifying all efforts to encourage, promote and improve it.
Why a conference on "green" contracts? The organizers explain: "Trees and green areas are considered by most public administrations as a cost, when instead, compared to 1 euro invested in the green, they can fall from 1.3 to 3.07 euros. Therefore, investing in the green area is worthwhile: a good endowment of ecosystem services in urban areas means greater per capita wealth, in terms of natural capital, but also greater health and resilience of the territories.
Taking greater account of the environmental benefits of urban green spaces in the cost / benefit analyzes would allow a more intelligent use of public money to be achieved, to the full advantage of the coffers and portfolios of administrations and citizens. Not unimportant aspect in an age of economic difficulty and continuous cuts in the costs of local authorities.
However, the quality of the public green is strongly influenced by the procurement, management and care contracts, which unfortunately favor little or no professional businesses, black labor and qualitatively poor, even wrong or harmful interventions. This causes serious damage to public green assets and increased management costs due to harmful interventions.
In addition to the economic damage to the coffers of public bodies and consequently of private citizens, companies that work professionally and comply with labor and safety regulations and laws "suffer from this situation".
After the work already done at regional and national level to raise the sector (which also focused on the definition of professional standards) Assofloro Lombardia gives priority and urgent the improvement of the procedures for the completion of tenders for the awarding of management and care of the public green. "The races - continue by the association of nursery gardeners - no longer have to be entrusted according to the criterion of maximum reduction; almost always in fact the latter is accompanied by the low quality of the work performed and consequently unfair competition for the awarding of tenders. It is a system that favors situations of illegality, diffused from north to south Italy and transversal to public administrations of large and small size. It is a system that causes economic, landscape and environmental damage and actually nullifies attempts and intentions to improve and increase urban green spaces ".