Because I criticize Arcuri’s choice of primrose pavilions for vaccination

26 January 20215 years babelfish

What does Commissioner Arcuri's call for tenders say about the primrose pavilions for vaccinations. The post by Carlo Quintelli, professor of Engineering and Architecture at the University of Parma, taken from his Facebook profile .

Sorry for the length …., I have no words but in reality I would also have too many in the face of the call for tenders of Commissioner Arcuri, through Invitalia, to create the boeri vaccinal primrose pavilion (published on the 20th with deadline for technical-economic offers January 27 !!). Despite the obvious ambitions of the project, the more or less polite invitations to let it go, the negative technical observations that have emerged through social media no less than in numerous interventions on web and traditional media, well no, Arcuri without any response proceeds anyway. This is an attitude that worries about those who hold such an extraordinary decision-making role, in terms of objectives and spending. Some reflections to better understand after reading the announcement and the attached technical material.

1) The tender concerns the assignment of detailed design, engineering, supply on site, maintenance, disassembly and housing of temporary pavilions intended for the administration of anti Covid-19 vaccines for a minimum of 21 pavilions (one for each Region I think … ) to be delivered within one month of signing the contract. The pavilion measures 315 square meters and to build, transport and set up 21 turnkey rooms, including furnishings, in different parts of Italy, you give 30 days of time! And where repairs are required, they ask us for an intervention within 30 minutes of calling! (To be brought to the attention of the Pentagon or Amazon logistics research!)

Of the two, one would think: either whoever drew up the announcement is totally naive and extraneous to the sector or someone has already everything ready since the beginning of December. Or it happens as with the desks for schools that have almost all gone out of contractual delivery time (and penalties?).

2) The Commissioner, in the announcement, reserves the right to request the production of pavilions up to 1,200 units (one thousand two hundred, you got it right …) it is not clear in what times, with what logic, under what conditions (he knows the commissioner). The maximum cost is € 1,300 / sqm + VAT, so if Arcuri is limited to 21 pavilions (demonstrative? Experimental? Promotional? Actually useless for the vaccination campaign) we will be between 8 and 9 million euros, but if in a delirium of omnipotence orders 1,200 we carry around half a billion euros (of our money). And it sounds bad that the award score is based at 70% on the technical quality and 30% on the economic quality of the offers….

3) Each of these pavilions can have a maximum cost of € 400,000 (+/- 20%) and at this modest sum is able to carry out 6 vaccinations at a time for the duration, including anamnesis, of 10/15 minutes depending on the subjects . But let's say 12 minutes for 6 workstations = 30 vaccinations / hour for 10 hours = 300 x 90 days (three months), without missing a shift and with Taylorist efficiency, 27,000 people are vaccinated, a small center with 30,000 inhabitants, spending "only "10 times as much compared to a vaccine point of similar scope in the civic hall, in the parish hall, in the gymnasium, under the Alpine tent and so on … For a center of 100,000 inhabitants, the pavilion of almost half a million euros vaccinates them all but it takes him a year (slow vaccination). The solution? You buy three, positioned in three different squares and we solve it by spending the modest sum of one and a half million euros. Now you understand why the Commissioner reserves the right to order 1,200 if we consider that we have 103 cities with more than 60,000 inhabitants and different from over 200,000 plus Rome and Milan. What can I say … I understand more and more the perplexities of certain countries in granting us European credit.

4) We now come to the quality of the pavilion that the announcement leaves to the free interpretation of the builders except for “the absolute unchangeability of the aesthetics of the project”. For a structure with technical health purposes, I would not have expected this primacy of aesthetics and for everything else "companies do vobis" but, as the WHO report said (disappeared in 24 hours), the Italian anti-pandemic organization stands out for "creativity". In any case, architecture is an art (tecne) where the ratio is put to the test and then those 16 people are not explained in a waiting area of about 40sqm which also acts as an entrance / exit (not separate), point reception, hallway to the corridors, where everyone meets everyone etc. etc. Moreover, a space only 2.70 meters high (domestic type) with limited volumes of air and which will be strongly depressurized (with what effects?). Let's hope it does not act as a contamination area …. Has it been certified by someone? The rest of the environments are submersible, 2.60 meters deep of the spaces for anamnesis and vaccination (suitable for 4 people including operators and patients / companions), corridors of 1.40 meters, "room equipped for adverse reactions" from about 9 square meters (we hope not to need it …) and last but not least, with an average of 50 people always present in the primrose, only two bathrooms for the patients and one (obviously unisex) for the operators (we trust in the nearby bars, if in the yellow zone).

I do not go further (systems, structures, roofing, curtain walls, windows) also because they are largely entrusted to the "enterprises fate vobis", but a final question must be made to Commissioner Arcuri. Was a cost-benefit assessment carried out between what all other countries in the world are doing (using public spaces already available) and the “strategy” of the pavilions-primrose? If the answer is negative, I appeal to the passage of the announcement which reads "… the presentation of the offer does not bind the extraordinary Commissioner to entrust the construction of the pavilions …" thus saving what can be saved. If, on the other hand, the Commissioner persists without any response, the appeal must be addressed to the Regions which, despite the general chaos, will be able (perhaps) to dissuade him, deservingly demonstrating that they have already identified suitable public structures with greater efficiency and great savings of resources. If that were still not enough, after the final appeal to political responsibility of those who allow such decision-making power (?), There would remain the sad italic outcome of a report to the Procurement Observatory and to the Court of Auditors asking us "why we must always get to this point?"

Post taken from the Facebook page of Carlo Quintelli.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/padiglioni-primula-arcuri-vaccinazione/ on Tue, 26 Jan 2021 09:11:36 +0000.