Rosatom to restructure work with suppliers on international projects
MOSCOW. Nov 15 (Interfax) - Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear corporation, plans to restructure its work in the area of purchasing and tighten relations with its suppliers in international projects, the company's first deputy CEO for development and international business, Kirill Komarov at the Atomex 2017 forum for nuclear industry suppliers.
"The issue of quality arises in the selection of suppliers within the context of foreign projects. Our objective is to improve the quality of the work of the contract service, carry out typification of purchasing procedures," Rosatom CEO Alexei Likhachev said at the forum.
"We will move toward using international standards [both in purchasing and fulfilling contractual obligations] with a mandatory audit of suppliers. We will not only look at what suppliers are doing, but also how," Komarov said.
Rosatom's director of purchasing, logistics and quality management, Roman Zimonas said that the share of orders for Rosatom's foreign construction projects is beginning to exceed the share of orders for Russian projects.
Rosatom needs to make about 40,000 purchases totaling about 1.1 trillion rubles at the end of this year and in 2018, including 604 billion rubles of purchases related to the implementation of international projects, he said.
"Abroad there is a different regulatory framework with its own tough requirements. Therefore, we also need new tough mechanisms for working with suppliers," Zimonas said.
In the case of international projects, Rosatom is forced to deviate in its work with suppliers from the norms of the Russian laws On the Contract System (44-FZ) and On Purchases of Goods, Work and Services by Certain Types of Legal Entities (223-FZ), he said.
"When working on international projects, it's simpler for us to opt to violate our purchasing laws and pay administrative fines than to violate contractual obligations," Zimonas said.
In work with suppliers on international projects, Rosatom intends to increase the size of lots, for example for construction, in order to attract experienced and qualified contractors capable of guaranteeing and ensuring high quality fulfilment of project work, Zimonas said.
There are also plans to widely use preliminary audits of suppliers to make decisions on granting a given company access to Rosatom purchasing. The company has already prepared and fine-tuned the procedure for such audits.
Zimonas also said that Rosatom is exploring the possibility of introducing several new mechanisms for vetting potential suppliers, including checking whether the supplier has the necessary staff and resource assessments of companies, among others.
Rosatom currently works with 15,000 suppliers, and annual purchases total about 800 billion rubles. Rosatom has recently secured contracts for a substantial number of major foreign projects that call for building 34 generating units. The company plans to conduct competitive purchases totalling more than 1.1 trillion rubles at the end of 2017 and in the course of 2018.