The Act 27/92, on 24th November, of Puertos del Estado and the Merchant Navy, amended by the act 62/97, on 26th December, lays down, in its articles 25.c) y 26.ñ.), "the promotion of the research and technological developement in the fields of the port economy, management, logistics and engineering" as well as the "definition of innovation policies" as functions of the public entity Puertos del Estado." Furthermore, the 46.1 article of this Act lays down that a percentage of the Funds will be invested on the Ports of State General Interest so that they can carry out research and developement tasks.

The Puertos del Estado Public Entity has enough characteristics and scope of responsibilities to generate the synergy required to promote, coordinate and develop, along with the Port Authorities, Autonomic Regions, Universalities, Research Centers and enterprises on the field of the ports, technological innovation and technological support programmes within the port context.

PUERTOS DEL ESTADO is supporting the definition of agreements or contracts with enterprises, Universities and other public research entities in order to share the experience and technological knowledge as well as to promote the development in Spain of research groups within the port context.

The ROM Programme started at 1987 by order of the Ports and Coasts General Directorate of the Ministry for Transport and Public Works. Thus, a Technical Commission was created that would be responsible for writing a list of Recommendations or Technical Legislation. These recommendations and technical legislation gathered information about the most advanced technology fields within the Civil Engineering so that it could be easily accessed by designers, builders and port departments. Thus, these professionals would adopt the same criteria and, consequently, would optimise their professional performance, improve the prestige of the Spanish port technology worldwide and promote the exportation of this technology.

Since its creation in 1992, the Public Entity for Puertos del Estado, like an organization that took the responsibilities and duties of the former Dirección General de Puertos, continued developping the Recommendations for Port Works (Recomendaciones de Obras Marítimas: ROM). Thus, they promoted the collaboration with other public entities and private companies in order to enhance the contents of this Programm.

The continuous technological evolution and hence, the developement of new tools designed to face the problems occurred in more and more complex scenarios, quite different from the scenarios of the original Programme, has caused that PUERTOS DEL ESTADO is constantly reviewing and updating the basic criteria and recommendations already published. These reviews and updates will improve the quality of the Programme.

The Universities and Public Entities that have collaborated in the ROM Programm are a significant reference in the port and maritime engineering, both in the field of the research and in the technological developement. Furthermore, the group of private enterprises that have also collaborated in the Programme have a very important experience and activity within the maritime and port context, both at the domestic and international levels.

Puertos del Estado has just approved the creation of "ROM 2001-2003" Program and hence, it becomes necessary to define a new framework that guarantees dynamism, accurateness, quality, transparency and security during the whole process. In addition, this new framework must reinforce the collaboration of public and private entities from any sector whose scientific-technical background can be helpful for this Programm.

Based on all the issues quoted above, the Commission AGREES the following points:

I) Approval of a general framework and an organizational structure for the development of the "ROM 2001-2003" Programm, detailed in the Annex. This framework considers the Management, Follow-up and Control Department mainly responsible for the ROM, as established in clauses 4 and subsequent ones.

II) The Management, Follow-up and Control Department will be responsible for carrying out the functions allocated to the Technical Commission according to the hiring rules of Puertos del Estado and of the Port Entities in those cases of contracts concerning the ROM..

III) Enable the President of Puertos del Estado to promote the collaboration of other entities whose experience can be helpful for future projects of the ROM Programm, as established in clause 2 of the Proceedings.