‘it is incomprehensible to focus on internal PA planning’

13/01/2021 – OICE, the Association of Italian engineering and architecture companies, member of Confindustria, takes a new position with respect to internal designs by a public design facility and on the risks of a return to an ‘Italstat del Progetto’, following the agreement signed between Investitalia and the Agenzia del Demanio to activate projects with 20 million for the reuse and redevelopment of public buildings.

“The recent agreement signed between Investitalia and the Agenzia del Demanio – says OICE – leaves us very perplexed because it is the result of a wrong, ideological, at least anti-historical choice and which is not based on data of reality. In Italy, whatever people say, the ability to design is not lacking at all, indeed! Our design companies are absolutely sought after abroad for the technical quality they can express. The ability of companies and professionals to design is not a problem; so why, we ask ourselves, do we have to continue to waste time, from time to time, with retrograde ideas of predisposition of umpteenth public design apparatuses? “

“The country’s problem, however, is the difficulty in planning, managing and controlling executive processes. Today, even with the provisions of the Simplification Decree, a design can be entrusted quickly and in a very streamlined manner. If anything, the problem is to approve the projects in safe time and have them implemented according to the time schedules and estimated costs. This must be the task of a public structure, not that of renouncing to entrust projects and carry them out internally ”.

Per l’OICE, powering public design structures represents a simply illogical and anachronistic choice in contrast to what happens in industrialized and modernly organized countries: “abroad, instead of generating new bureaucratic monsters – specifies the president Gabriele Scicolone – they ask the market for high quality services and know how to control and verify the responses of the market, organized in a multidisciplinary and technologically advanced way that a public design structure could never be “.

“On the other hand, the public design machine moves about one billion euros of design per year; what is a structure needed to activate 20 million design? A drop in the ocean “. The OICE proposal is to quickly change course and invest in resources and personnel not so much to design as to program and control, essential tasks for a modern state.

“Even the difficulties we are witnessing in defining the PNRR confirm that the ability to plan, select interventions and fully understand their strategic importance and usefulness, represents Italy’s true Achilles heel. On this too it would be enough to refer to the experience of the private world that of the project management makes a fundamental technical lever. We are at the disposal of the Government and the State Property Agency for an open and frank discussion on these issues, in the primary interest of our country which, especially in these difficult times, cannot afford even a single strategic mistake ”.

Source: OICE