Budescu: We have launched over 400 km of highway for auction

The National Road Investment Company has launched over 400 kilometers of highway on the main corridors of the country, has three objectives in design and another six in the design and execution phase, all of which totaling over 50 billion lei, said on Wednesday, the general director of CNIR, Gabriel Budescu, at the conference ‘Italy & Romania, building together sustainable infrastructure’.

‘In the short period since we started our activity – we launched the first tenders at the end of September 2024 – we have launched over 400 kilometers of highway on the main corridors of the country. We have three objectives in design and another six objectives in design and execution. All of this totals over 50 billion lei. These are essential objectives for us and, as a new approach, so to speak, feasibility studies have no longer been imposed as imperative solutions in our tenders. This means that we left the door open for entrepreneurs to adapt their technologies and offer the best prices. It also means that I gave my colleagues work to check what entrepreneurs are doing, because the entrepreneur will always want to make more profit and we will want to do quality, but I am confident that we will successfully complete them,’ said Budescu.

According to him, CNIR is ‘a new element on the administrative scene of road infrastructure in Romania’.

‘In May last year, we approved the first budget of this company. At the end of June 2024, the first engineers came to the company. But, in the meantime, we have moved quite well with everything we have achieved at the Road Investment Company and we want to improve both the implementation of road infrastructure projects and the collaboration with entrepreneurs in the future. We have several strategic directions that we are pursuing in carrying out our activity. Here, sustainability is one of the main pillars that we have in mind and that we have in mind and want to develop in the future, within our contracts, and we hope that our future strategy will also include public-private partnership projects, in addition to those with European funds, which we are already dealing with,’ mentioned the head of CNIR.

Gabriel Budescu emphasized that the prospects of the new infrastructure company are to take over all the other investment objectives in the portfolio of the Ministry of Transport and hopes to have a medium and long-term strategy as soon as possible, which, on the one hand, will help CNIR to develop, and on the other hand, will help entrepreneurs to have predictability.

On the internal organization side, the general director claimed that he tried to digitalize as much as possible from the very beginning.

‘In addition to the internal aspects, our internal kitchen, electronic timekeeping, cars equipped with GPS, internal human resources management applications, we have recently introduced an application through which any citizen can check whether or not their land is affected by the ongoing objectives at the National Road Investment Company. We are continuing to develop this application to offer the possibility of being queried also based on the cadastral number. It is an application that will continue to be improved like anything else. As the saying goes – ‘When learning stops and evolution stops’ -, we want to continue to evolve. In addition to these internal aspects, in the relationship with entrepreneurs, as I told you, we also introduced the use of BIM for the first time as a requirement for a beneficiary, we introduced the use of electric or hybrid equipment, as appropriate, and for the first time we requested the use of recyclable materials in our works, speaking of sustainability, because we requested that we have a minimum of 3% recyclable material used in the foundation of the highways, for the first time. In the future, we will improve these aspects and we will come up with other new elements,’ he assured.

In addition, Budescu emphasized, the development of the horizontal economy was also pursued, by involving local authorities in the areas crossed by the CNIR objectives.

‘At the same time, we also have partnerships with educational institutions. We tried to develop the horizontal economy by involving local authorities where our objectives pass. We requested that unemployed people from the counties crossed by the CNIR objectives be employed in the projects. “I have also initiated a protocol with the Penitentiary Administration, so that the labor force from prisons can be used, and I consider it a very important aspect that these people can be reintegrated into the labor market and society at the same time,” Gabriel Budescu stated.