Judicial Palace in Brno

Last week, the Brno regional court awarded authors Stojan-Burian-Křivinka and the company Project building 14.3 million CZK for their study of the Justice Palace in Brno. This is one of the few disputes in which architects have managed to assert their rights. It is important to point out that the building of the court has been accompanied from the outset by problems related to the public procurement process. The Czech Chamber of Architects has repeatedly pointed out several of these issues as early as 2005.

The procurement of public contracts for building projects in the Czech Republic has increasingly been proceeding very poorly of late. Investors underestimate their intentions, lack definitions of the assignment, or keep changing it, circumvent laws, for example by splitting the contract into several sub-threshold contracts, do not respect copyright, have discriminatory requirements for project authors, etc., not to mention outright criminal intentions. The same was true for one of the largest investment projects in South Moravia – the construction of the new Justice Palace in Brno.

An architectural competition did not take place
This building, which shapes the public space and required relatively high financial resources, was supposed to be representative not only for Czech justice due to its scale and function. Let us realize that this is a gigantic project. The palace houses four courts – the Brno City Court, the Brno-Venkov District Court, the Brno City Public Prosecutor's Office, and the Public Prosecutor's Office for Brno-Venkov. It could therefore be expected that the contract would be awarded in a maximally correct, transparent, and efficient manner with respect to the investor, which was the Ministry of Justice. One of the possibilities to achieve this and obtain a quality project was to utilize a globally recognized model, which is an architectural competition. This approach was recommended by the Czech Chamber of Architects to the representatives of the investor as early as March 2005. It is worth remembering that the tradition of architectural competitions for the construction of state apparatus buildings and premises in the Czech Republic goes back to the 19th century and that similar procedures are followed for similar contracts abroad. However, the investor, which was the Ministry of Justice, or the Regional Court in Brno, did not organize an architectural competition.

An inappropriate public commercial competition took place
The Regional Court (Judicial Administration) decided to organize a public commercial competition (VOS) for the supplier of the project. This method was considered the only correct one and apparently less economically and time-consuming. However, decisions regarding a project of such significance should be made through a design competition and not through a public commercial competition (where participants do not present specific design solutions for the building, but rather the preliminary determination of implementation costs, qualifications of participants, references, turnover, etc., is assessed). However, what matters is the overall quality of the architectural, artistic, layout, operational, technical, material, and shape solutions. Unfortunately, such integrity is not enabled by a public commercial competition. If at least an ideological architectural competition had been announced, it would have been possible to timely establish and responsibly assess the conditions for the construction, including financial requirements.

Low fees for studies paid off
Before the investor announced a public commercial competition, it decided to obtain some architectural proposals nonetheless. Initially, based on consultations, they only created a very general outline of a construction program and invited one studio to collaborate on the study. Subsequently, they asked not only this studio for further elaboration of the study but also approached three other teams, which, with the prospect of securing the contract, were willing to develop a proposal for the urban and architectural solution of the building, including interior layouts, for just 50,000 CZK. According to recommended pricing tables, however, the documentation of this extent should correspond to nearly 8 million CZK (assuming total investment costs for the construction would reach a realistic 1.2 billion CZK); allowing for intense negotiations, we are still in the range of millions of CZK for the study. The fee for the elaboration of the study was, of course, disproportionately low. Nevertheless, architects often work for these dumping prices, which are also in violation of the Professional and Ethical Code of the Czech Chamber of Architects (§ 18). Investors know this, and so they usually do not consider the work on a study to be particularly demanding and repeatedly only pay authors a symbolic "sketch fee," if they pay anything at all.
Four studies of the Justice Palace were evaluated by a jury composed only of dependent experts, that is, representatives of the investor, and they chose the proposal by Aleš Burian, Gustav Křivinka, and Petr Stojan as the most suitable.

Copyrights were violated
This was followed by the aforementioned public commercial competition for the supplier of the project documentation of the construction. One of the many conditions that the participating teams had to comply with was to respect the study by authors Burian, Křivinka, Stojan (contractually secured with the company Project building). The study was part of the tender documentation for a restricted procedure. The tender documentation also contained a provision that required the supplier to settle copyright issues with the authors of the entry study, which was prepared by the aforementioned trio. However, the winning team, Centroprojekt Zlín with VPÚ Deco, did not do so. Moreover, the copyrights of this team were not secured in any way, and the investor did not pay more than the quoted 50,000 CZK for work on the entry study, nor was a licensing agreement drawn up. However, when dividing the public contract into individual stages of project documentation (a separate study, project for zoning proceedings, etc.), there is always a high probability of copyright disputes due to the taking over of individual parts of the contract among designers. Additionally, the Public Procurement Act does not allow the division of phases into sub-threshold contracts. The Czech Chamber of Architects warned about this problem several times in the spring of 2005.

The competition included discriminatory requirements
Why did the association of architects Project building, Burian, and Křivinka not enter the public commercial competition for the project documentation supplier? Because it included discriminatory requirements for the authors of the documentation that narrowed the pool of potential bidders for the contract and thus did not allow for a genuinely broad competition. This led to a violation of equal access to the competition. Very few can prove that they are insured for more than 25 million CZK, built buildings with a value exceeding twice 100 million CZK, and in one case even 700 million CZK, etc. The companies that can meet such requirements can be counted on the fingers of one hand. In addition to the investor, the Czech Chamber of Architects also informed the Minister of Justice about these facts.

Money was misinvested
The building was indeed constructed according to the original design and concept of authors Burian, Křivinka, and Stojan. Without resolving copyright issues, the proposal was taken over in the context of the public commercial competition for their project by Centroprojekt Zlín and VPÚ Deco. Apart from the facade, which was completely changed, the realization does not differ much from the study. The construction cost taxpayers 1.8 billion CZK. Although economic efficiency was the main criterion for evaluation in the public commercial competition, financing could not be controlled. The construction did not cost the initially quoted investment amount of 768 million CZK (this original estimate was unrealistically low) nor the more realistic estimate of the court expert of 1.2 billion CZK (approximately 5700 CZK/m³ of built-up area), and the realization rose to as much as 1.8 billion. Who will bear responsibility for the misinvestment of approximately 600 million CZK?
That the project and construction were unnecessarily inflated was also confirmed by the Supreme Audit Office (NKÚ). The case was investigated by the police based on a criminal complaint from NKÚ but did not confirm the commission of any offense. Now the case will be dealt with by the Ministry of Finance of Czech Republic with suspicion of committing an administrative offense of violating budgetary discipline.

A positive note at the end – architects won the court case
Most affected usually try to resolve disputes out of court. This time, however, the studio that took over the contract offered the damaged party such an unreasonably low sum for the elaboration of the study and license (reportedly 2 million CZK) that an agreement could not be reached. The case went all the way to the Regional Court in Brno. The court ruled that the companies Centroprojekt Zlín and VPÚ Deco Praha must pay the authors of the basic study of the Justice Palace a total of 14.3 million CZK. Not only the license price of 7,751,287 CZK determined by an expert opinion but ultimately also the claim for a similarly high amount beyond the basic license, which is a form of compensation for the authors' damage, was granted. This is also good news for the strengthening of the rule of law and legal awareness. The verdict is not yet final, and it can be expected that it will be addressed by the High Court and possibly also the Supreme Court.