Tender Board defends award of contracts for Schoonard to Crane 4-lane roadway

The National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (NPTAB), has defended the procurement process for the recently concluded Schoonard- Crane 4-lane highway, as concerns are being raised about the awarding of the contract for some of lots and the quality of work that was done.

The contract for the highway was awarded to several contractors in lots.

AFC Leader Nigel Hughes has been highlighting a number of concerns and has stated that in some instances, the highest bidder was awarded the contract over many of the lower bids and much higher than the estimate of the engineers.

Mr. Hughes recently published a document noting that 18 bids were lower than the contract awarded L’Heureuse Construction and Services Inc for one of the lots, and in another, there were 11 bids lower that the bid of Vals Construction, which was awarded the contract.

There were a number of similar occurrences.

“Lot 4, however, is the most egregious and strains credulity to breaking point. NPTAB seemingly dispensed with the concept of the lowest evaluated bidder altogether by awarding the contract to the highest bidder, GuyAmerica Construction Inc. and they did so at a price that was $690 million dollars above the Engineer’s Estimate,” Mr. Hughes, had pointed out.

According to Mr. Hughes, in all cases there were contractors with equal or superior experience who had lower tender prices.

“The National Procurement and Tender Administration Board (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,” Hughes said.

But NPTAB responded in statement saying that the process was transparent and transparent methods were used to award the contracts.

According to the Tender Board, it is important to emphasise that the Open Tendering method, the most competitive and transparent procurement method, was used.

It said Thirty-two (32) bidders submitted tenders which were evaluated strictly in accordance with the Evaluation Criteriam and eight of the bidders were compliant with the administrative and technical criteria set out in the bidding documents. The Tender Board said those bidders were deemed responsive and were considered for further evaluation, while those who were non-responsive were not further evaluated.

The National Tender Board also said each bidder was limited to one lot and evaluated based on the combination of the contractor’s resources, experience and capacity to execute the works within the stipulated timeline and scope of works and that it 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.