Early this week Bucharest City Hall opened five bids for works on the Calicilor Bridge and the Dâmbovița banks between Unirii Square and Izvor Bridge. Estimated value: 63.96 million lei excluding VAT. Evaluation takes 60 days. Signing, at the earliest in December, is a date, not a contract. An opened tender is not a building site.

B365, from the SEAP notice, names the bidders: Bog’Art; Retter Projectmanagement; the Unitip Global (lead) and Infra Expert AD joint bid; the Casa Design Mobila (lead) joint bid with Styh A&A, Îndemânarea Prodcom and Dogerik Trans; and the Concelex (lead) joint bid with X-Way Infrastructure. The list is not a ranking. No one has been awarded.

Object 1, as City Hall told Mediafax: a new pedestrian bridge between Șelari and Sfinții Apostoli, by the Palace of Justice and Domnița Bălașa Church. 32 metres long, 23 wide. Planned execution: 10 months. It is not today’s bridge; the old one is gone. “Rebuilt from scratch” is in the brief, not on the bank.

Object 2: about 11,000 square metres of quay between Unirii and Izvor, including cantilevered decks some two metres above the water. Planned duration: 18 months. The bridge’s 10 months and the banks’ 18 are not the same clock. Eighteen months, in other reports, is the banks’ duration, not an opening date.

Headlines that say the bridge “will be rebuilt” skip evaluation, possible challenges and signing. Until then there is no winner, no contract, no site calendar.

The name Calicilor comes from the old mahala by the princely court, according to the Bucharest Municipal Museum as cited by Mediafax. Etymology is not an urban-design project. 63.96 million lei excluding VAT is not a rounded 64 million as an invoice.

Image: the Palace of Justice, Bucharest, 20 June 2011, Mihai Petre, CC BY-SA 3.0 ro, Wikimedia Commons. The palace in 2011, not this week’s tender.

Sources consulted: An old bridge, tied to the history of Bucharest’s mahalas, is to be rebuilt from scratch — Mediafax; Who wants to rebuild the Calicilor Bridge and remake the Dâmbovița banks — B365.