Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les@guardian.co.tt

In the last year, sev­er­al state bod­ies have been found to be in breach of the pro­cure­ment law, po­ten­tial­ly cost­ing tax­pay­ers al­most $166,000 in le­gal fees. These in­clude three ten­der eval­u­a­tion fail­ures sim­i­lar to those un­cov­ered in the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s (HDC) can­celled $3.48 bil­lion hous­ing pro­gramme.

The find­ings in­volve the Min­istry of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion, Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC), Paria Fu­el Trad­ing and the To­ba­go Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (TRHA). All four lost pro­cure­ment chal­lenges be­fore hear­ing pan­els ap­point­ed by the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR).

In the OPR de­ci­sion doc­u­ments, Guardian Me­dia found that the pan­els or­dered the pub­lic bod­ies to pay a com­bined $165,920.83 in le­gal costs to con­trac­tors who chal­lenged their ten­der de­ci­sions - those are costs award­ed by the reg­u­la­tor, not fines.

One OPR pan­el put the rule at the cen­tre of these cas­es in plain terms: “It was not open for a pub­lic body to se­lect a ten­der­er by a dif­fer­ent method­ol­o­gy.”

That warn­ing was is­sued in a case in­volv­ing ve­hi­cle in­spec­tion stick­ers, not hous­ing. But the rule is the same one cit­ed in the in­quiry in­to HDC’s pro­posed hous­ing con­tracts. In three of the four de­ci­sions, the reg­u­la­tor found that the pub­lic body had failed to fol­low the eval­u­a­tion method dis­closed to bid­ders.

The fourth de­ci­sion, de­liv­ered against the TRHA on Oc­to­ber 16, found breach­es of two pro­vi­sions of the Pro­cure­ment Act. Its pub­lished or­der does not set out full writ­ten rea­sons, so the pre­cise na­ture of those fail­ures can­not yet be com­pared with HDC’s.

What the HDC re­port found

The lat­est rul­ings came af­ter Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed on Oc­to­ber 18 the OPR’s de­tailed find­ings con­cern­ing HDC’s $3.48 bil­lion hous­ing pro­gramme. The pro­posed pro­cure­ment cov­ered 11 pack­ages of build­ing and in­fra­struc­ture work at hous­ing de­vel­op­ments across Trinidad.

Un­der the De­sign-Build-Fi­nance mod­el, con­trac­tors were ex­pect­ed to arrange fi­nanc­ing for the work. The OPR ex­am­ined how HDC in­vit­ed bids, checked the ca­pac­i­ty of con­trac­tors and ar­rived at its rec­om­men­da­tions for award.

The in­quiry found that HDC had asked bid­ders for three years of au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments but had not set out a scor­ing method or min­i­mum stan­dard to test whether they could fi­nance the projects. The re­port said there was no ev­i­dence that those state­ments had been as­sessed to es­tab­lish bid­ders’ fi­nan­cial ca­pac­i­ty.

It al­so found prob­lems with the eval­u­a­tion of manda­to­ry re­quire­ments and changes in how some cri­te­ria were ap­plied. In one case, a bid­der’s tech­ni­cal score rose from 36.93 to 76.03 af­ter a re-eval­u­a­tion on April 7. The bid­der moved from tech­ni­cal­ly non-com­pli­ant to be­ing rec­om­mend­ed for award.

The cor­po­ra­tion can­celled the pro­cure­ment on June 17, 2026. The OPR’s in­quiry re­port was dat­ed Ju­ly 1. The $3.48 bil­lion was the stat­ed val­ue of the pro­posed pack­ages. It was not a find­ing that this amount had been paid out.

The OPR sub­se­quent­ly opened a sep­a­rate in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to al­le­ga­tions con­cern­ing the HDC process. The OPR con­firmed on Oc­to­ber 8 that its sep­a­rate probe in­to al­le­ga­tions of bid rig­ging and col­lu­sion was on­go­ing.

Price left out of Trans­port de­ci­sion

A pro­cure­ment for ve­hi­cle in­spec­tion stick­ers ex­posed one of the clear­est ex­am­ples of how eval­u­a­tion rules may have been dis­re­gard­ed.

In June 2026, the Min­istry of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion sought bids for the sup­ply and de­liv­ery of se­cure in­spec­tion stick­ers and print­ing con­sum­ables over three years. Four com­pa­nies sub­mit­ted bids.

The ten­der stat­ed that tech­ni­cal qual­i­ty would car­ry 70 per cent of the score and the price would car­ry 30 per cent. It al­so showed how those scores should be cal­cu­lat­ed and com­bined.

JAB­CO Lim­it­ed of­fered the low­est price, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 48 per cent be­low that of Pow­er Cy­cle Lim­it­ed, which the min­istry rec­om­mend­ed for the con­tract. JAB­CO chal­lenged the de­ci­sion.

The OPR found that the min­istry’s eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee had cho­sen the bid­der with the high­est tech­ni­cal score with­out cal­cu­lat­ing the re­quired com­bined score. In do­ing so, it left out the 30 per cent fi­nan­cial com­po­nent.

The hear­ing pan­el did not find that JAB­CO should nec­es­sar­i­ly have won the con­tract. Its de­ci­sion was that the min­istry had not fol­lowed the rules set out in its own ten­der doc­u­ments.

On Sep­tem­ber 9, the reg­u­la­tor or­dered the min­istry to ter­mi­nate the pro­cure­ment and pay JAB­CO $43,100 in le­gal costs. Writ­ten rea­sons fol­lowed on Oc­to­ber 9.

Con­fi­den­tial terms in T&TEC ten­der

T&TEC faced a sim­i­lar find­ing over a ten­der to up­grade the first phase of its IP video sur­veil­lance sys­tem.

Jian En­ter­pris­es Lim­it­ed chal­lenged the re-eval­u­a­tion of bids af­ter KVR En­er­gy Lim­it­ed was iden­ti­fied as the pro­posed suc­cess­ful bid­der. The dis­pute fol­lowed an ear­li­er chal­lenge and a con­fi­den­tial sched­ule of agreed terms be­tween the par­ties.

The new eval­u­a­tion used a method un­der which bid­ders could re­ceive full marks for a cri­te­ri­on un­less a spe­cif­ic fail­ure was iden­ti­fied. The method was not in the orig­i­nal ten­der doc­u­ments.

The OPR pan­el found that a pri­vate agree­ment could not change a State body’s du­ty to eval­u­ate all ten­ders ac­cord­ing to the pub­lished rules. As the writ­ten rea­sons stat­ed: “A pri­vate agree­ment be­tween the procur­ing en­ti­ty and a bid­der could not al­ter that re­quire­ment.”

The de­ci­sion al­so record­ed that Jian’s bid was ap­prox­i­mate­ly 14.2 per cent low­er than KVR’s, but both re­ceived full marks for price. The pan­el made clear that iden­ti­cal price scores were not, on their own, proof of a breach. The un­law­ful step was the use of an undis­closed eval­u­a­tion method.

The pan­el or­dered T&TEC to ter­mi­nate the pro­cure­ment on Au­gust 14 and pay Jian $42,337.50 in costs. Its writ­ten rea­sons said there was in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to es­tab­lish the chal­lenger’s al­le­ga­tions of bias or a de­lib­er­ate at­tempt to favour KVR.

A pric­ing test bid­ders did not know

At Paria Fu­el Trad­ing, the dis­put­ed pro­cure­ment was for ma­rine se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices.

The com­pa­ny is­sued a fresh in­vi­ta­tion to bid in Oc­to­ber 2025, af­ter can­celling an ear­li­er ex­er­cise. Bid­ders were told their prices would be as­sessed against in­dus­try stan­dards.

But Paria’s eval­u­a­tors used an in­ter­nal com­pa­ny es­ti­mate and undis­closed price bands. Bids clos­er to that es­ti­mate re­ceived high­er scores. Amal­ga­mat­ed Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices Lim­it­ed chal­lenged the process.

The OPR found that Paria had used a method bid­ders could not have known from the ten­der doc­u­ments. The pan­el said the undis­closed sys­tem made the com­mer­cial eval­u­a­tion “pro­ce­du­ral­ly un­fair and legal­ly in­valid”.

Paria can­celled the pro­cure­ment on March 27 this year, af­ter the chal­lenge was filed. But the pan­el ruled that can­cel­la­tion did not erase the bid­der’s right to seek le­gal costs if a breach had oc­curred.

The April 28 or­der re­quired Paria to pay Amal­ga­mat­ed Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices $36,383.33, rep­re­sent­ing one-third of as­sessed le­gal costs. The writ­ten rea­sons were is­sued in May.

Lat­est rul­ing in To­ba­go

The most re­cent de­ci­sion con­cerns the TRHA’s ten­der for con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices to im­ple­ment a qual­i­ty man­age­ment sys­tem.

J.M. Mer­cedes Prop­er­ty Man­age­ment, Con­sul­tan­cy and Con­tract­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed brought the chal­lenge. In an or­der dat­ed Oc­to­ber 16, the OPR found that the au­thor­i­ty breached Sec­tions 5(2) and 30(1)(a) of the Act.

The hear­ing pan­el or­dered the TRHA to pay the com­pa­ny $44,100 in le­gal costs by De­cem­ber 16. It dis­missed a sep­a­rate claim for the bid­der’s sub­mis­sion costs be­cause that amount had not been proved.

Un­like the three oth­er cas­es, the OPR’s pub­lic reg­is­ter did not con­tain de­tailed writ­ten rea­sons for the TRHA rul­ing. It would there­fore be wrong to say the same eval­u­a­tion-method breach was es­tab­lished in that case.

Changes to the law

There is an­oth­er is­sue fol­low­ing the HDC re­port. On Oc­to­ber 9, the Gov­ern­ment’s amend­ments to the pro­cure­ment law were sub­se­quent­ly pub­lished as an Act of Par­lia­ment, ef­fec­tive­ly chang­ing what the OPR can do af­ter cer­tain com­plaints and in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Un­der the amend­ed Sec­tion 44, the reg­u­la­tor can­not use a Part IV com­plaint or in­ves­ti­ga­tion to or­der a pub­lic body to sus­pend a ten­der, re-eval­u­ate bids, over­turn a con­tract or ter­mi­nate pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings. Rec­om­men­da­tions made un­der that Part are ad­vi­so­ry and not bind­ing.

The changes al­so ex­empt qual­i­fy­ing pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships for pub­lic hous­ing from the Act’s pro­cure­ment re­quire­ments.

That has im­pli­ca­tions for any fu­ture de­ci­sion to re­tender HDC’s hous­ing pack­ages.

An OPR source said the find­ings against HDC were sup­port­ed by the rules gov­ern­ing pub­lic pro­cure­ment. But the source al­so raised con­cerns about what the re­cent amend­ment means for fu­ture hous­ing con­tracts.

When asked whether the on­go­ing HDC in­ves­ti­ga­tion was now ef­fec­tive­ly a waste fol­low­ing the pro­cure­ment amend­ments, the source replied:

“Well, ba­si­cal­ly, yes. It could on­ly be based on the amend­ment to the Act.”

How­ev­er, the source said the au­dit was well ex­e­cut­ed. “And I think based on the find­ings and the con­clu­sion, it was a well done au­dit in­ves­ti­ga­tion on the cir­cum­stances un­der which these things were award­ed.”

The source said that if the can­celled HDC hous­ing pack­ages are put out to ten­der again un­der a pub­lic-hous­ing pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship, the new ex­emp­tion could put those con­tracts out­side the OPR’s nor­mal pro­cure­ment over­sight.

The source de­scribed the po­si­tion con­fronting the reg­u­la­tor in stark terms.

“They are be­tween a rock and a hard place. That’s the OPR in terms of what they can do and what they can’t do.”

The source said the changes would not pre­vent a sep­a­rate crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion if ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing emerged.

“That doesn’t stop the DPP or the po­lice from con­duct­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion if there is any al­leged cor­rup­tion or cor­rupt prac­tices.”

The source said the amend­ments do not ter­mi­nate in­ves­ti­ga­tions that be­gan be­fore the law changed.

Ef­forts to con­tact Reg­u­la­tor Bev­er­ly Khan were un­suc­cess­ful.