Kruunusillat contest to restart

After a delay of a year, Helsinki's Kruunusillat bridge design competition is finally to move forward.

Following submission and evaluation of prequalifications, the contest ground to a halt last year when one entrant, Leonhardt, Andrä und Partner, decided to challenge the evaluations in court. Now, the Finnish commercial court has rejected that challenge, and the scheme can again move ahead. No date has yet been set for the restart, nor have the chosen ten competitors been officially announced.

However, I've seen the prequalification evaluation report, and here are the ten teams I expect to be taking part in this competition:

• WSP Finland / Knight Architects
• Arup / UNStudio
• Carlos Fernández Casado
• Pontek Oy
• Knippers Helbig / Zwarts and Jansma
• Apia XXI / Batlle and Roig
• Schüssler-Plan Ingenieurgesellschaft / Dietmar Feichtinger Architectes
• Setec TPI / RFR
• Roughan O'Donovan / Michel Virlogeux / Dumetier Design
• Arup / Amanda Levete Architects

There are some well-known names in there, as well as several that were previously unknown to me. I would say they are all quite capable of producing a fine design for a 1km long light rail viaduct, which is the central substance of the design competition.

However, there were a number of very big names who failed in prequalifying. As well as Leonhardt, these include the likes of Zaha Hadid Architects, Gehry Partners, Studio Daniel Libeskind, Ramboll, Rosales & Partners, Marc Mimram, Aecom, Flint and Neill, Schlaich Bergermann und Partner, Ney & Partners, Buro Happold, and many more. Several of these are clearly as competent as the firms which did prequalify, if not considerably more so in some cases. It's also clear that this was a very attractive project for some major designers, no doubt helped by the payments available to competitors, which are generous by comparison with many other bridge design competitions.

The evaluation process was based almost entirely on participants' prior experience of projects similar to the Kruunusillat scheme. That would seem to offer little scope for the ambitious and talented, but if a client judges that a safe pair of hands is what's important, then that is their choice.

What was notably more peculiar was their insistence that the projects submitted to demonstrate experience had to be on the personal CV of the lead structural and architectural designers. I find that quite bizarre given the way that most designers operate as teams. Will the success or failure of Kruunusillat's chosen design really depend on the prior experience of figureheads? I find that absurd.

If this were not bad enough, the actual prequalification evaluation process looks quite comical when seen from outside. One of the failed entrants, a structural designer respected worldwide for their landmark bridge expertise, was judged as follows (scoring a miserly 65 marks out of a possible 200 for structural engineering):

"Structural designer who has solved the problems conventionally. The overall structural engineering impression of the references is ordinary. However, the references lack broad projects with overall responsibility for planning."

Two very well-known, very large international consulting engineers, both with an excellent track record in bridge design, secured only 20 marks out of 200 in the same category.

Another entrant, a world-famous architect, scored 80 out of a possible 100 for bridge aesthetics, despite securing these comments:

"Very few bridges or infrastructure projects presented. It is hard to judge if the applicant would have anything to offer in the bridge design even if the building projects are interesting with highly expressive forms. This kind of design approach would probably not suit at all to bridge design where special care has to be given to integrate the structures to the aesthetic design. Moreover the applicant's contrasting attitude to the surroundings in the very valuable competition area probably wouldn't lead up to good results. Why did not the applicant join forces with somebody else having the required bridge references?"

I could easily offer many similar examples here, but you get the point. The evaluation was, at best, highly subjective, and at worst, crassly incompetent. I am sure those taking part will provide some excellent designs, but there is more than one consultant who should feel aggrieved at how the scheme's design procurement has been handled so far.

Leonhardt's submission to the Finnish court raised much the same issues. They contended that the numerical marking and verbal assessment were inconsistent; that the marking for other contestants was so inconsistent as to indicate a lack of objectivity; and that the criterion eventually used for scoring had not been properly set out in advance in the City of Helsinki's invitation to prequalify. The court's decision can be found online.