MANAGEMENT OF THE CONSTRUCTION PROCESSES OF PUBLIC WORKS IN ITALY

ABSTRACT

Detailed assessments on the feasibility of a project help to define its implementation strategies, moreover mitigating its non-quality risks. As a formal guarantee of this principle, processes concerning the construction of public works in Italy consider an ex-ante phase of the programme, which encompasses projects accompanied by feasibility checks of design alternatives. The latter, through technical, economic, managerial, etc., assessments, represents a decision-making support for the planning and design of individual projects, assuming the existence of public utility characteristics. Tools to support decision-making ex-ante seem to be highly important, above all in the case of strategic projects, understood as initiatives capable of producing social and economic development, competitiveness and the improvement of local resources.The feasibility checks, enabling formalizations with different connotations and intensities, but fine-tuned according to the specific projects, represent key devices for the rational, efficient and economically sustainable management of the initiatives. They also mitigate the inevitability of the uncertainty scenarios characteristic of each initiative, and minimize their risks.In terms of economic and financial sustainability, these checks concern whether the initiatives represent an opportunity or not in relation to the size, risks and implementation time. Moreover, they consider the identification of ways to: obtain financial resources; achieve the economic and financial balance of the investments, in relation to the expected revenues, and the time required to produce them, and the monetary flows that can be allocated in the construction phases as well as management and maintenance phases.Critical scenario factors primarily converge in the weakness of the public client, in terms of the internalization of skills, moreover associated with the current phase of restrictions on available resources, which often translate into processes of delegation to other operators, not devoid of diseconomies, which can often be attributed to a lack of management and public scrutiny.

Keywords: regulations, building process, programming, design, reliability