Tallinn snow clearing audit: Unfeasible goal and insufficient supervision

An audit has revealed that the City of Tallinn has set unrealistic goals for snow removal and has been unable to ensure that contractors have fulfilled their contractual obligations. The contracts, which are unfavorable to the city, remain in force until the end of 2029.
A report titled "Analysis and Recommendations for Organizing Winter Street Maintenance" compiled by the City of Tallinn's internal auditor reveals that the city has set unrealistic goals for snow removal.
"The objective set for maintaining Tallinn's roads and streets — that 100 percent of street surfaces must comply with legal requirements on an annual average basis — is unattainable," the audit states. "Although this target was reported as met in the 'Tallinn 2035' overview of operational areas, no actual compliance assessment took place. The Urban Environment and Public Works Department must establish realistic goals and metrics for evaluating them."
Responsibility for snow removal in Tallinn is divided between the Urban Environment and Public Works Department and district administrations. The report highlights fragmented management of street maintenance as a key issue.
Insufficient supervision
The audit reveals that oversight of maintenance work has been inadequate — during the winter period, the most problematic areas have been the maintenance and inspection of sidewalks, stairways and bike paths. Additionally, many supervisory actions, including on-site inspections, have not been documented in writing, making it impossible to verify retroactively how often agencies actually assessed road conditions on location.
At the same time, the report notes that if city agencies aim to conduct thorough quality checks of the service, the potential workload would become unreasonably large.
Contracts up to 138 percent more expensive than planned
The audit highlights that no market analysis was conducted during the preparation of procurements and the department underestimated the contract costs. All procurement contracts signed by Tallinn's Urban Environment and Public Works Department in 2022 exceeded the anticipated costs — the contracts were awarded at prices 47 to 138 percent higher than planned.
Compared to the previous period (2015-2022), the total value of contracts increased up to 3.5 times. Road maintenance costs in 2023 were over 60 percent higher than in 2022, rising from €20.1 million to €32.6 million.
According to the report, the cost increase was driven by the expansion of maintenance areas, the higher volume of snow removal, stricter road condition requirements and the overall rise in the cost of living.
Contractor files €400,000 worth of false data
The audit reveals that some contractors have failed to comply with procurement and contractual terms and the city has been unable to enforce them. While the city has accepted the use of subcontractors, it has not verified who actually provided the service or under what conditions.
Additionally, the reports submitted by contractors have at times been unreliable and the city has not consistently verified their accuracy. Spot checks in 2023 found that a contractor submitted false data to the city worth €400,000 — the vehicles listed in the records either did not exist or were passenger cars unsuitable for snow removal operations.
Contractual changes result in unexpected price hikes
The issue of contract amendments was not clearly addressed in the procurements and agreements, leading to misunderstandings with contractors and unexpected price increases.
For instance, the contract with the Lasnamäe District Administration did not set a cap on price adjustments based on the consumer price index, unlike other agreements that had limits of 2.5 to 5 percent. As a result, unit prices for work were raised by 9.1 percent at the beginning of 2023 and by 9.2 percent at the start of 2024. Including changes to the scope of work, the total contract value has already increased by 22 percent compared to the original amount, with the latest amendment bringing the value to €5,602,732.
The contract is valid until 2028 and, if the trend continues, may increase significantly in cost.
Cameras and GPS devices seen as solution
The audit provides several recommendations for Tallinn's Urban Environment and Public Works Department as well as the district administrations.
The department is advised to develop a comprehensive strategy for street maintenance and take on a central coordinating role in organizing street upkeep. It is also recommended to install cameras at snow disposal sites to monitor the volume of snow delivered and to continue improving information systems to enable more effective use of GPS data.
District administrations are encouraged to ensure systematic oversight of street maintenance contracts and to establish a clear system for tracking contract amendments.
The department and district administrations are further advised to collaborate on creating a supervision manual to standardize future oversight practices.
Department: Cameras and GPS devices already installed
Jaan Tarmak, who became head of Tallinn's Urban Environment and Public Works Department at the end of 2022, told "Aktuaalne kaamera" news that the department has already installed cameras at snow disposal sites and GPS trackers on vehicles. However, he noted that it is not possible to amend the existing contracts.
Tarmak explained that while the audit was conducted by the city's internal control service, much of the content is based on the department's own internal analyses.
"We have a lot of issues. We've been thoroughly analyzing them for a long time. Internally, we've conducted more than 15 different audits and analyses and this internal control audit framed all of those into one comprehensive document," Tarmak said.
"We are currently working to identify the problems and have started solving them one by one. But not everything can be fixed overnight," he added.
Tarmak said the department has addressed the snow transport issue, which he identified as the most financially significant problem. "For snow transport, we've installed cameras at the disposal sites and GPS trackers on the trucks. Now we have additional data on how much snow has actually been transported," he explained.
"We've already seen that the manually submitted reports from our maintenance partners differ somewhat from the data in our systems. We now want to understand exactly why these discrepancies occur," Tarmak said.
He acknowledged that the fragmented management between the Urban Environment and Public Works Department and district administrations creates problems.
"We lack clear management," Tarmak said. "We've proposed various ways to the new city government to unify this process and we're currently pursuing a softer approach to better coordinate district administrations. Many of the analyses we are conducting today already cover all city departments."
According to Tarmak, it is not possible to change the terms of the existing contracts.
"The city signed contracts in 2022 that lock in the conditions for seven years," he said. "That's a longer-term practice than at the national level. In my opinion, it's an unreasonably long period. We're bound by those terms now and it's very difficult to make flexible changes. What we can do is order additional services. We've already done that this year — the most visible example being the cleaning of sidewalks in the city center."
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Editor: Valner Väino