Article 204. General contractor.

1. The assignment of global services to the general contractor is achieved through the conclusion of a contract which obliges the economic operator to carry out a work and pursue a specific administrative result indicated in the notice and in the contract, with organization of the necessary means and with management at your own risk in exchange for a fee determined based on the result obtained and the services rendered. The assignment to the general contractor is decided by the granting body taking into account the complexity and heterogeneity of the services requested and the need to pursue a high quality and effective administrative result, and provided that the amount of the assignment is not less than 100 million euros. 2. The relationships between the awarding entity and the general contractor are regulated, in addition to the tender notice and the contract, by the provisions of the code on procurement and concession contracts. 3. The general contractor is held between 'other: a) to draw up the executive project, in accordance with the technical-economic feasibility project drawn up by the contracting entity, and to carry out the activities instrumental to its approval; b) to ensure pre-financing, in whole or in part, of the work; c) to constantly communicate to the contracting party the information necessary to prevent attempts at mafia infiltration. 4. The contract may provide that: a) the economic operator has the status of expropriating authority, as defined by article 3 of the text of the legislative and regulatory provisions regarding expropriation for public utility, referred to in the decree of the President of the Republic of 8 June 2001, n. 327, with the power to expropriate and take care of the related proceedings; b) the economic operator identifies the ways of managing the work and selecting the subjects to whom such management can be entrusted. 5. The granting body draws up the technical-economic feasibility project and approves the executive project and its variants. 6. The tender notice and the contract establish: a) the criteria for determining and reducing the fee due to the general contractor based on the result obtained and to the services rendered; b) the methods and times of payment of the consideration, which in any case occurs after testing for the part relating to the works carried out in advance; c) the own resources of the general contractor pursuant to paragraph 14; d) the methods of attribution to the parties of any supervening charges, incidents on the consideration and deriving from regulatory provisions or provisions of other authorities; e) the measures suitable for preventing attempts at mafia infiltration and conditioning and the related costs, not subject to auction discount. 7. The risk deriving from variations in the project requested by the granting body, or caused by force majeure or by provisions of other authorities, is borne by the granting body. 8. The risk deriving from variations caused by omissions, inaccuracies or errors in the executive project are the responsibility of the general contractor. 9. Except for the cases provided for in paragraphs 7 and 8, the economic operator communicates the variations of the project to the granting body to allow the latter to object when these alter the characteristics specifics of the work, or the ways or times of its completion, or in any case modify the administrative result deduced in the contract. 10. The provisions of the code which allow the use of the negotiated procedure without prior publication do not apply to project variations of a tender notice. 11. The general contractor can perform the services deducted in the obligation also by establishing a special purpose company, in which subjects with suitable professionalism requirements can participate, including the institutional investors referred to in article 193, paragraph 1, fourth period, indicated in advance at the time of participation in the tender. The special purpose company is governed by article 194 as well as by the following provisions. 12. Unless otherwise established in the contract, the general contractor or the various subjects that compose it are jointly liable with the special purpose company for the exact fulfillment of the contractual obligations. Alternatively, the special purpose company can provide the granting body with bank and insurance guarantees for the repayment of the sums received during construction, thus freeing the members. The guarantees cease when the test certificate of the work is issued. The assignment of credits of the general contractor and of the special purpose company is regulated by the provisions of the code on the assignment of credits from contract and concession fees. 13. The general contractor can also perform the contractual services by entrusting them to third parties, in possession of the required requirements of qualification, on whom no obligations and burdens may be imposed in addition to those which burden the general contractor in relations with the granting body. Third party contractors may proceed with sub-contracting, in the ways and within the limits established for public works contracts. The rules on subcontracting apply. 14. The tender and the contract determine the share of the value of the work that must be carried out with an advance of resources from the general contractor. To finance this portion, the general contractor or the special purpose company may issue bonds, subject to authorization from the supervisory bodies, also in derogation of the limits established by article 2412 of the civil code. The granting body guarantees the payment of the bonds issued, within the limits of its debt towards the general contractor, in the ways established by decree of the Minister of Economy and Finance, in agreement with the Minister of Infrastructure and Transport. 15. L The contracting entity pays the amount for the services rendered and pre-financed by the general contractor with the issuance of a payment certificate due upon expiry of the pre-financing according to the contractual provisions. The payment certificate constitutes definitive recognition of the credit of the assigning financier only for the credits referred to in this paragraph transferred for loans without recourse or with limited recourse. No exception to the payment of the recognized pre-financing quotas is applicable to the transferee, deriving from the relationship between the debtor and the transferring creditor, including compensation with credits deriving from the fulfillment of the same contract or with any different credit towards the transferring general contractor. 16. The notice and the contract indicate the final deadline for payment of the credits definitively recognized pursuant to paragraph 15, in cases of failure or late achievement of the result deduced in the contract. 17. The definitive recognition of the credit does not take effect when the guarantees for the execution of works of particular value, as regulated by the code, have been reduced or when the reduction is expressly provided for, unless the guarantee is restored or the reduction provision is eliminated. 18. The granting body, in the manner provided for in the tender or the contract, controls the performance of the general contractor and the carrying out of the works and verifies the work completed and the result obtained before delivery, possibly proposing the necessary modifications and variations, provided that these do not alter specific characteristics of the work and the result indicated in the tender and in the technical-economic feasibility project. The granting body appoints the works manager and the testers and carries out the testing. EFFECTIVE FROM: 1 July 2023