Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

The award of a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar con­tract for the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port’s Val­sayn Av­enue Bridge project to Maraj Hill Gen­er­al Con­trac­tors Com­pa­ny Ltd has been sus­pend­ed by the tri­bunal of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tions (OPR).

On Wednes­day, the OPR’s hear­ing pan­el, com­pris­ing Sparkle Sel­man, David Charlerie and Joy Joseph-Lara, up­held an ap­pli­ca­tion brought by Kall Co Ltd against the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Nipdec) chal­leng­ing the pro­cure­ment process. Le­gal sources said this was the first sus­pen­sion of an award of a gov­ern­ment con­tract by the OPR since the new pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion took ef­fect ear­li­er this year.

On Sep­tem­ber 19, Kall Co, through its at­tor­neys, asked the OPR to re­view the award of a con­tract for the Val­sayn Av­enue Bridge re­con­struc­tion and as­so­ci­at­ed works un­der­tak­en by the Min­istry’s Project Man­age­ment Unit un­der the Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE).

Nipdec award­ed the con­tract to Maraj Hill ear­li­er this month, but Kall Co Ltd is not con­vinced that the prop­er pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dure was fol­lowed.

In June, Nipdec in­vit­ed ten­ders for the project and nine com­pa­nies sub­mit­ted bids but one did not sub­mit valid com­pli­ance cer­tifi­cates. On Sep­tem­ber 9 Nipdec in­di­cat­ed that Maraj Hill had been award­ed the con­tract for $15,118,140.88.

Doc­u­ments show that Kall Co’s bid was the sec­ond low­est at $13,213,752.75. Oth­er un­suc­cess­ful bid­ders in­clud­ed Ju­nior Sam­my Con­trac­tors and Lutch­meesingh Trans­port Con­trac­tors Ltd.

Nipdec in­di­cat­ed that Kall Co failed the tech­ni­cal ap­proach, method­ol­o­gy and pro­gramme of ex­e­cu­tion of works. It fur­ther stat­ed that the firm pro­vid­ed gener­ic in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to the key com­po­nents of the works.

“In­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing shoring, de­mo­li­tion of the ex­ist­ing bridge, con­struc­tion of the abut­ment base and oth­er area of the scope such as in­stal­la­tion of drainage lay­er be­hind abut­ment and re­tain­ing wall, struc­tur­al back­fill be­hind abut­ment and re­tain­ing wall, and ero­sion con­trol mea­sures was ei­ther vague or not men­tioned,” Nipdec stat­ed.

While the min­i­mum score for this cat­e­go­ry was 34 points, Nipdec said Kall Co scored 27.75, while Maraj Hill scored 90.5 points out of 100 in the tech­ni­cal/fi­nan­cial eval­u­a­tion.

In their com­plaint, Kall Co is con­tend­ing that the ten­der rules were not ob­served and Nipdec did not prop­er­ly, fair­ly, com­pe­tent­ly, and law­ful­ly as­sess its tech­ni­cal bid.

The firm fur­ther claims that Nipdec’s de­ci­sion to “fail” them was not prop­er­ly ex­plained and/or par­tic­u­larised and its as­sess­ment of the com­pa­ny’s tech­ni­cal ap­proach is sub­jec­tive, er­ro­neous, un­law­ful and not in keep­ing with the oblig­a­tions ex­pressed and/or im­plied un­der the ten­der oblig­a­tions.

Kall Co fur­ther claimed that Nipdec did not rea­son­ably seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the “pur­port­ed vague­ness or any­thing be­ing gener­ic” un­der Sec 33 of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tions.