The National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) has stated that the evaluation process for the Schoonord to Crane Road was done in full compliance of the Procurement Act, but Alliance for Change Leader Nigel Hughes is calling for the release of it and the reports.
However, NPTAB sources said that Hughes, being an attorney, should know that the release of the bidders’ information could not be made public and that there was a process in place for aggrieved bidders.
“We are reassured about NPTAB’s stated commitment to “ensuring an open, fair, competitive, and transparent public procurement process,” Hughes said in a letter to the editor. “Consequently, in keeping with this commitment, we request that NPTAB releases the following: the full Evaluation Criteria used to evaluate tender submissions and the Evaluation Reports for the eight lots.”
“Release of the above will no doubt go a far way to addressing the many lingering questions regarding the award of contracts for the CHPA’s Schoonord to Crane Road Project and reassure the public that all the tenders were evaluated strictly in accordance with the Evaluation Criteria,” he added.
The source noted that the Procurement Act lays out “the process for an aggrieved bidder, what NPTAB must do, what the procuring entity must do after evaluation… all of that is there.”
On Friday, and following criticisms by Hughes, the government defended the contract awards for the construction of the $11.8 billion Schoonord-to-Crane Highway insisting that the NPTAB followed all legal procurement steps. It disclosed that only eight of the 32 bids were responsive. Questions have been raised about the decisions being made by the evaluation committees of the NPTAB.
“The NPTAB accepted the recommendations made by the evaluators based on their representations regarding the respective contractors’ capacity to execute the individual lots in a timely manner, given the urgency within which the project was required to be completed,” a release from the Ministry of Finance stated.
“The NPTAB remains committed to ensuring an open, fair, competitive, and transparent public procurement process,” it added.
The road project contract which was inked in September, 2022, for just over $11.8 billion had been awarded to eight contractors via the national procurement process. The winning contractors were VR Construction Inc, Avi-nash Contracting & Scrap Metal Inc, L’Heureuse Construction and Services Inc, GuyAmerica Con-struction Inc, AJM Enter-prise, Vals Construction, Puran Bros Disposal Inc, and JS Guyana Inc.
Hughes said in a release that Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo should provide tangible evidence of adherence to the Public Procurement Act regarding the Schoonord Highway construction project, after Jagdeo held a procurement forum issuing a stern warning and pointing out penalties for non-adherence.
“The Vice President had previously emphasized the importance of adherence to the Procurement Act and the necessity for fairness in awarding contracts…,” Hughes wrote in his letter to the Editor.
Hughes pointed out that the Procurement Act provides for the regulation of the procurement of goods, services and the execution of works, to promote competition among suppliers and contractors and to promote fairness and transparency in the procurement process.
“It sets out the procedures for the management of public procurement. Section 42(1) of the Procurement Act states that ‘…the tender that has been identified as the lowest evaluated tender shall be accepted’,” he said.
Producing three tables with all of the bidders for the lots and their respective tenders, he analyzed that the vast majority had lower sums than the contractors awarded.
“As can be seen from the tables above for Lot 3 there were 18 bidders lower than the contract awardee L’Heureuse Con-struction and Services Inc; for Lot 5 there were 20 bidders lower than the contract awardee AJM Enter-prise; for Lot 6 there were 11 bidders lower than the contract awardee Vals Construction; for Lot 7 there were 5 bidders lower than the contract awardee Puran Brothers, and for Lot 8 there were 7 bidders lower than the contract awardee JS Guyana Inc,” he stated.
“In all cases there were contractors with equal or superior experience who had lower tender prices. The NPTAB, in all the cited cases, based on the awards, would have us believe that none of the tenders with lower bid prices were deemed ‘evaluated’ which strains credulity,” he added.
Pointing to Lot 4, Hughes said it was the “most egregious and strains credulity to breaking point,” given that a bid with hundreds of millions more over the Engineer’s Estimate was chosen.
“NPTAB seemingly dispensed with the concept of the lowest evaluated bidder altogether by awarding the contract to the highest bidder – GuyAmerica Con-struction Inc – and they did so at a price that was $690 million dollars above the Engineer’s Estimate,” Hughes outlined.
“If the Guyanese people are to be convinced of the Vice President’s sincerity and commitment to adherence of public procurement to the Procurement Act, he would do well to provide tangible evidence that these contract awards were indeed in accordance with the said act,” he added.
At a press conference he hosted on Thursday, Jagdeo said that he had asked the Finance Ministry which holds oversight for NPTAB to respond to Hughes’ letter and the subsequent release.
Yesterday, Hughes thanked NPTAB “for the alacrity of their response to questions surrounding the award of the eight lots of the Central Housing and Planning Authority’s Road Project – Construction of Four Lane Highway from Schoonord, WBD – Tender Reference Number 31/2022/45.”
However, he said it raised even more questions..
NPTAB in a press release stated, inter alia, “Thirty-two bidders submitted tenders which were evaluated strictly in accordance with the Evaluation Criteria. Eight of the bidders were compliant with the administrative and technical criteria set out in the bidding documents”. The issue, however, is not so much about the eight allegedly compliant bidders, but rather the reasons why more experienced bidders with lower tender prices, in most instances hundreds of millions of dollars lower than the allegedly compliant bidders, were deemed not compliant and consequently disqualified. Among these are: International Contractors Surrey Paving and Aggregate Co, established in 1967 [which] successfully completed the West Coast Demerara Road Rehabilitation Pro-ject for US$32 million,” Hughes argued.
“China Railway First Group, a global construction company [which] successfully completed the Better Hope to Belfield Road Project for US$47 million, China Road and Bridge Corporation, a global construction company recently awarded the Good Success to Timehri Road Rehabilitation Pro-ject for US$75 million. Local contractors, experienced local contractors with decades more road construction experience than the contract awardees such as: H Nauth and Sons BK International, KP Thomas and Sons; Ivor Allen,” he added.
Concerns have also been raised about substandard works on the $11.8 billion project, which President Irfaan Ali dismissed as “empty noises,” saying that some of the works being highlighted were incomplete.
“There is absolutely no concern about Schoonord [road project]. I shared… some information because there are some drain covers. These are covers where the form [board] still has to be removed and this is ongoing,” Ali had told Stabroek News, earlier this month when asked about the issue.
