Voluntary prior transparency: "Cycling comfort measurement"

The province of Gelderland, with 1,200 kilometers of roads and 1,400 kilometers of cycle paths and parallel roads, is the largest provincial road manager in the Netherlands. The province ensures that the roads are good and safe to ride on for the user. For this purpose, an annual inspection of the asphalt pavements is necessary. For years, various provinces have had comfort measurements carried out on cycle paths. Until 2013, there was only one party that could perform these tasks. In recent years, lobbying has been done to get other parties to also carry out these measurements. Since 2014, there has been a second party that can perform comfort measurements on cycle paths. However, the continued existence of multiple parties in this relatively small market with special measuring equipment and software for specific Dutch standards is not self-evident. Given the market, an annual recurring pattern, and the efforts we as the province of Gelderland have made to get a second party, we also benefit from both parties receiving assignments to continue investing in this technology. Province Gelderland has therefore also decided in recent years to distribute the assignments almost equally among the two sole market parties at the moment. Experience with and research of the current market and contacts with other provincial organizations have shown that there are no other parties that can offer these supplies and services. The delivered supplies and services are important for gaining insight into the quality of the pavement of cycle paths and also form a basis for drawing up a sound maintenance plan. For Province Gelderland, these requirements and wishes are important, among other things, to be able to fulfill the tasks to be carried out by Province Gelderland, but also to meet the legally stipulated requirements regarding the state of maintenance of the pavement. The conditions that Province Gelderland sets for the qualitative technical and safety requirements of the supplies and services are based on policy and law and are not artificially restricted. For the aforementioned technical reasons and within the available and reasonable financial frameworks, the awarding of contracts is therefore only possible to both aforementioned parties, Asset Insight and Kiwa Koac. Province Gelderland will continue to assess how the market situation changes during the maximum period of four years. Province Gelderland was thus of the opinion that the exception provision of Article 2.32, paragraph 1 sub b under 2 of the Procurement Act 2012 could be invoked, whereby the public contract can only be performed by a specific contractor (in this case two) because competition is lacking for technical reasons. In addition, there is no reasonable alternative or substitute (Article 2.32, paragraph 3). The market has been extensively examined and it has been objectively established that only two parties can carry out this assignment within acceptable financial frameworks.