TCE-MT gives Várzea Grande City Hall 30 days to present documents on school construction

The process is the result of the conversion of an internal representation that found irregularities in the prices charged in contract 22/2020, signed between the Municipality of Várzea Grande and the company Cevic Construtora e Incorporadora Eireli for the construction of a school with ten classrooms, with the capacity to serve up to three hundred students. Based on the technical reports, Antonio Joaquim identified that the reference budget had duplicate items and above-average prices, resulting in overpricing in the bidding planning.

"The TCE's technical unit demonstrated the existence of several items with overvalued unit prices and inconsistent quantities in the reference budget used to instruct the competition, including highlighting duplicate items, a circumstance that compromises the reliability of the budget spreadsheet and reveals a relevant defect in the planning. Therefore, the existence of an overpricing in the base budget is sufficient to characterize an irregularity", argued the rapporteur.

Despite the budget failure, the Court of Auditors concluded that there was no actual financial loss, as the total amount paid to the company was lower than market prices. “Although the existence of overpricing in the budget was recognized, the occurrence of overpricing was not proven during execution, since the overall amount actually paid to the contractor remained lower than the market price calculated by the technical unit”, pointed out Antonio Joaquim.

The special accounting was judged to be regular with reservations by the councilors, who ordered the Municipality of Várzea Grande to inform and prove the status of the work, if a new tender had been made for its completion, with the sending of all relevant documents.

The decision also included recommendations for the current management of the Municipal Executive to adopt the cost and price compositions contained in the National Civil Construction Cost and Indices Research System (SinapiI) for the preparation of reference budgets for tenders for works and engineering services in the municipality. “In the event that it is unfeasible to fully use this topic, a detailed technical justification must be presented accompanied by suitable market research, in order to ensure the reliability of the estimated values, the transparency of the bidding process and the mitigation of overpricing risks”, concluded the rapporteur.

Finally, the Plenary decided to impose a fine on the civil engineer responsible for preparing the basic project for the competition, which resulted in contract 22/2020, for having presented an overpriced base budget. The penalty must be paid with own resources. In his vote, the rapporteur partially accepted the approved vote of counselor Guilherme Antonio Maluf.