When can a fibre network be called handed over? Testing under Italy’s Procurement Code
7 min read
Eighteen months after installation, a fault takes down a backbone link between two sites belonging to a public body. Whoever has to respond asks for the test certificate: what arrives is a PDF with a signature and the word tested, no issue date, no name of the signatory, no sign of whether it is provisional or final. Nobody can answer a question that seemed obvious on handover day: can that network really be called handed over? And from when, with what proof in hand?
Testing or conformity verification: the line the specification should already answer
Legislative Decree 31 March 2023, no. 36 — Italy’s Public Contracts Code — devotes Article 116, in force from 31 December 2024, to the phase that closes out a contract. Its heading is «Collaudo e verifica di conformità» (Testing and conformity verification), and paragraph 1 sets the distinction straight away: works contracts are subject to testing, services and supplies contracts to conformity verification, to certify compliance with the technical, economic and qualitative characteristics of the works and performance, as well as objectives and timescales, per the contract’s terms.
For a fibre network the distinction is not abstract. Laying a run — duct, pull, splice, patching — is works: it gets tested. Maintaining an existing network under a multi-year contract is almost always a continuous service: its conformity gets verified, not tested. For the latter, paragraph 9 changes the rhythm of checks: save for justified reasons, conformity-verification activities are carried out throughout the performance of contracts with periodic or continuous obligations — not one act at the end, but checks staggered across the whole term.
From provisional to final: the two years nobody marks
Paragraph 2 sets a deadline written into the rule, not derived: final testing or conformity verification must be completed no later than six months from completion of the works or services, extendable to a year in cases of particular complexity under Annex II.14.
The certificate that results, though, does not close the file. It is provisional in nature and becomes final two years after it is issued. Once that period has elapsed, testing is deemed tacitly approved even if the formal approval act has not been issued within two months of that deadline. Two years from issue: that is the written threshold. The two months that follow concern the formal approval act, and do not move it: if that act never comes, testing is deemed approved anyway. What goes in the diary is the issue date plus two years. Paragraph 3 ties the contractor’s liability to that same threshold: the contractor is liable for defects and flaws in the works, even if recognisable, provided the contracting authority reports them before the test certificate becomes final — whoever files it away as closed business on signing day is often closing a file the rule still treats as open.
Who signs off testing, and who cannot
The tester is not a free choice. Paragraph 4 requires public contracting authorities to appoint between one and three testers, with qualifications matched to the contract, holding the requirements of integrity, competence and professionalism; testers employed by the same authority belong to functionally independent units — independent of whoever directed the works.
For services and supplies — the multi-year maintenance contract, again — paragraph 5 assigns the task to whoever is already on site: conformity verification is carried out by the RUP or, where appointed, by the executing director. Paragraph 6 adds incompatibilities: appointment cannot go to anyone who has carried out, or is carrying out, control, verification, design, approval, authorisation, oversight or direction duties on the contract being tested — whoever directed the works cannot then certify them.
The certificate of proper execution: the substitution the rule provides, not one anyone can promise
On smaller network contracts, the word heard most often is not testing — it is regolare esecuzione, proper execution. Paragraph 7 frames it as a governed exception: the cases in which the works test certificate and the conformity-verification certificate may be replaced by the certificate of proper execution are governed by Annex II.14.
We have not read the full text of Annex II.14: we know it exists and governs those cases, not which thresholds make the substitution legitimate. Paragraph 8, meanwhile, applies to every services or supplies contract: the technical arrangements and timescales for conformity verification are set by the contracting authority in the specification — not by custom, in writing, before the contract starts.
Where each piece of proof sits today
The certificate — testing, conformity verification or proper execution — stays on file with the contracting authority, with the tester’s name and the dates marking its path from provisional to final. But it declares conforming a piece of work proven by evidence that lives elsewhere.
The OTDR traces stay a report to read in full, not a PDF filed away. The splice and re-entry log, where it exists, is a log almost nobody updates. The route actually laid should end up in the as-built record, if anyone updated it after the last change on site. The handover record, with the date the deadline runs from, stays in the RUP’s file. The DURC and payslips proving the labour was paid sit with the contractor and its social-security bodies. The calibration certificates, if they exist, sit with the hire firm or the laboratory that issued them.
Six places, one certificate that says conforming, and none of the six talk to each other. Who, asked today to prove a run was really tested, not just stamped, could pull it together in an hour?
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What we don’t know
This is not legal advice, nor a compliance opinion. We have not read the full text of Annex II.14 — referred to for the deadline extended to a year and for the cases of substitution with the certificate of proper execution — nor of Annex II.15, referred to by paragraph 11 for the cost of laboratory tests, nor of Article 1669 of the Civil Code, referred to by paragraph 3: where we cite them, it is by reference. We do not state thresholds or categories for which the substitution is admitted, since we have not verified them. Anyone drafting a specification or accepting a test on this basis should have the current text checked, annexes included, by a qualified consultant.
What to write in the specification, what to check at acceptance
In the specification: testing or conformity verification, and on what basis (paragraph 1); the deadline — six months, or a year with the complexity stated (paragraph 2); the tester’s name and qualification, independent of whoever directed the works (paragraphs 4 and 6); whether the certificate of proper execution replaces full testing, on what legal basis (paragraph 7); and, for continuous services, the cadence of verifications across the whole term (paragraphs 8 and 9).
At acceptance, a signature is not enough: check that the deadline runs from the date of the handover record; that the certificate states whether it is provisional or final; that the tester appears, with their qualification; and that the six pieces of evidence above are genuinely retrievable, not just promised in a clause.
Two pillars, applied here
The test certificate, the handover record, the OTDR traces, the splice log, the as-built record, the DURC and the calibration certificates become, with CSIDIA, the group’s other company, a single map on which an AI checks, before the deadline runs out, whether the documents Article 116 requires genuinely exist — provisional or final, an independent tester or not, evidence retrievable or missing. It is the same approach for public-sector bodies. Within the client’s own perimeter: on-premises on self-contained machines with no deep integration, or a dedicated cloud with a data centre in Italy, always with shared management.
The site visit, at no cost, produces the list of your runs — for each one, whether the certificate on file is for testing, conformity verification or proper execution, whether it is still provisional or already final, and whether the six pieces of evidence behind it are genuinely retrievable today or only claimed. Including the boxes that stay blank: it’s yours to keep even if we don’t go on to work together.