(Trinidad Guardian) A panel of the Office of the Procurement Regulator (OPR) has determined that the Housing Development Corporation may have deviated from the request for proposals (RFP) and other documents when it published an intention to award the contract to build housing units at Santa Rosa to China Harbour Engineering Company.
China Harbour was selected by HDC after it submitted a proposal to construct 644 housing units for $475.83 million on the 74-acre parcel of land at Santa Rosa. China Harbour’s cost per unit was $738,871.13.
Two of the bidders for the HDC contract initiated challenge proceedings against the HDC within the 14-day period standstill period stipulated in the Public Procure-ment and Disposal of Public Property Act.
A three-member hearing panel of the OPR delivered written reasons for the procurement regulator’s decision to suspend the procurement proceedings for the Santa Rosa housing development on August 22.
In its written reasons, the hearing panel addressed the application to review the process submitted by NH International (Caribbean) Ltd.
In its reasons, the hearing panel stated that NH International, whose executive chairman is veteran contractor Emile Elias, had raised the following allegations and grounds for review:
• That China Harbour breached the instructions to bidders and submitted a design that would not have been approved by the Town and Country Planning Division;
• That the T&T company established by China Harbour had not completed similar projects as outlined in the RFP;
• That the HDC did not follow the stated evaluation guidelines in the RFP and had erroneously used cost per unit as the metric for the evaluation of the financial proposals; and
• That the bidding process pursued by the HDC was not in alignment with the procurement regulations “as the technical and financial proposals cannot be assessed as one stage as occurred in this procurement.”
In applying the law to the facts of the matter, the OPR’s hearing panel stated that the HDC’s RFP for the project outlined that in the evaluation of the technical proposal “proponents must achieve no less than the minimum score for each section of the proposal.”
The hearing panel found that when it reviewed the technical evaluation report for China Harbour, it appeared that “the successful proponent did not receive the minimum score for all technical sections.
“The importance of achieving at least the minimum score for all technical sections was further amplified by the fact that proponents were advised in the RFP that ‘where the proponent has successfully achieved or surpassed the sectional and overall minimum scores, the commercial proposal may now be evaluated’.”
The OPR panel said that raised the question of whether China Harbour met the technical requirements, which were necessary to progress to evaluation of its commercial proposal.
The hearing panel said the RFP also required that designs shall be prepared in accordance with guidelines, regulations and legal requirements of all governmental statutory and regulatory agencies including the Town and Country Planning Division.
The panel noted that in China Harbour’s technical evaluation report, there were comments indicating that it was ‘not clearly stated’ or ‘undersized’.
“This raises the question of whether the proposal of the successful proponent met the Town and Country Planning Division requirements as stipulated in the RFP,” according to the hearing panel.
It also noted that there was no reference to cost per unit being utilised by evaluators in the commercial proposals.
