0000000000055088
AUTHOR
José Luis Fuentes-bargues
Analysis of the Scoring Formula of Economic Criteria in Public Works Procurement
[EN] Public works procurement regulates two award procedures from within the same criteria: either the price or a variety of different conditions. Although the question of price may not seem the most important factor to be considered, it is imperative to always be aware of it when bearing in mind the award criteria. Economic scoring formulae (ESF) are numerous and each agency has the authority to determine which will be used for each of their bids, making this article a comparative analysis of all the options. The results show that most formulas give the highest score to the most economic bidder, it is necessary to eliminate the use of formulas that give the highest score to the offers whic…
Determination of disproportionate tenders in public procurement
[EN] Public procurement is one of the fundamental pillars of the construction sector and the understanding of its statutory regulation is one of the keys to success. The government regulates the concept of disproportionate tenders to avoid deals that are too low, something which could jeopardise the execution of the work or cause problems during implementation such as conflicting prices, project modifications and delays. The criteria for determining the disproportionality of the offers are numerous and each contracting authority determines which to use in each process by carrying out a comparative analysis. The results show that the formulas of disproportionality based on a percentage of th…
Analysis of the process of environmental impact assessment for seawater desalination plants in Spain
Desalination generates drinking water and enhances the economic, social, and environmental development of many areas with few water resources, such as parts of the Middle East, North Africa, and southern Europe (such as Spain and Cyprus). Desalination plants may cause environmental impacts in coastal areas and so it is necessary to submit plans for new plants to a process of environmental impact assessment (EIA) in order to achieve more environmentally viable projects, meaning: optimal locations; appropriately used systems and technologies; effective preventive, compensatory, and corrective measures; and social and environmental acceptance. This article contains a study of the process of en…
A Methodology to Detect the Deviations of the Project s Budget Compared to Market Prices
[EN] The budget of a project reflects the cost of the investment needed to build an infrastructure, install a system or acquire new materials or supplies. A well-formulated budget in accordance with market prices, allows contractors to prepare offers according to their technical, economic and financial characteristics. On the other hand, it avoids current philosophies that aim to get the contract at any price. Philosophies subsequently used to point out problems and claims during the execution of the project (contradictory prices, delays, etc.) in order to recover some or the entire economic bid carried out during the tendering. In this paper a simple and fast methodology is developed to ch…
Risk Analysis of a Fuel Storage Terminal Using HAZOP and FTA
[EN] The size and complexity of industrial chemical plants, together with the nature of the products handled, means that an analysis and control of the risks involved is required. This paper presents a methodology for risk analysis in chemical and allied industries that is based on a combination of HAZard and OPerability analysis (HAZOP) and a quantitative analysis of the most relevant risks through the development of fault trees, fault tree analysis (FTA). Results from FTA allow prioritizing the preventive and corrective measures to minimize the probability of failure. An analysis of a case study is performed; it consists in the terminal for unloading chemical and petroleum products, and t…
Public procurement: current situation and points of improvement
[ES] La construcción pública ha sido, es y será uno de los pilares fundamentales del sector construcción español, si bien la actual situación de crisis económica y la reducción de la inversión pública en nuevas infraestructuras ha generado un descenso de actividad hasta niveles similares a los años noventa. El retorno a índices de actividad más elevados no solo se conseguirá con la recuperación de la economía del país, sino que será necesario realizar ciertas mejoras en los procesos de licitación con objeto de conseguir una mayor funcionalidad y flexibilidad en la contratación pública de obras.
Selecting a small run-of-river hydropower plan by the analytic hierarchy process (AHP): A case study of Miño-Sil river basin, Spain
Hydroelectric power is obtained by harnessing the potential energy of a mass of water flowing along a river bed to convert it first into mechanical and then into electrical energy. The system is therefore both clean and autonomous and has a high potential for development. A small hydropower plant has an installed power capacity of below 10 MW and is considered run-of-river when it diverts part of a river flow to generate its electricity. The use of multicriteria techniques in environmental decision making, including selecting between various alternatives, is important when it involves complex decisions in a number of disciplinary fields. The most widely used of these techniques is the analy…
Risk Assessment of a compound feed process based on HAZOP analysis and linguistic terms
[EN] The size and complexity of industrial plants, along with the characteristics of the products used, require a study, analysis and control of the existing risks in every industrial process. In this paper, a methodology for risk assessment in industrial plants, based on the combination of risks identification through the Hazard and Operability (HAZOP) analysis and the risks evaluation through linguistic variables and fuzzy numbers is applied to a case study consisting on a compound feed plant located in the town of Silla (Valencia, Spain). The results from this study show that the main risk in the compound feed production process is the formation of explosive atmospheres (ATEX). Therefore…