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The Gauteng Provincial Government this morning allowed the public to sit in on the adjudication of a tender, shining a spotlight on processes leading to the award of contracts. 

The meeting of the Bid Adjudication Committee (BAC) to assess the Cedar Road tender was held in the presence of bidders and interested parties at the Ekurhuleni Council Chambers. The committee received a report from the Bid Evaluation Committee and considered their recommendation.

The Bid Evaluation Committee members faced questioning on their recommendation and how they evaluated bid documents. In the end, the Bid Adjudication Committee voted to endorse the recommendation of Power Construction (Pty) Ltd. This recommendation, together with an independent probity team report, will be forwarded to the Head of the Department of Roads and Transport Mr Ronald Swartz for a final decision on awarding the contract.

The committee made certain recommendations regarding improving specifications and clarifying evaluation criteria as early as when the specifications are advertised.

Finance MEC Barbara Creecy and Roads and Transport MEC Ismail Vadi observed the meeting from the public gallery. After adjudication, the two MECs explained to the media present that it was the first time they observed the workings of a Bid Adjudication Committee.

The two MECs made it clear that they were only observers and not participants in the process. Their interest was to draw lessons from this pilot as it would lead to a province-wide policy on opening the adjudication of tenders to the public.

“After this pilot process we will ask in particular Roads and Transport and the Department of Infrastructure Development to work with us to reflect on lessons learned, in particular how much work is involved in preparing the specifications and price schedules for tenders because those two processes are very technical. This information will then be included in a Revised Open Tender Policy that will be taken to the Gauteng Executive Council for adoption so that it can be rolled out across the provincial government during this term,” MEC Creecy said.

MEC Vadi said the Open Tender Pilot process shows the importance of detailed work that must be done prior to advertising the contract to establish proper specifications for each project including estimates of costs and time.

“We will draw lessons from this once the final decision is made. We must tighten up on the procedures. This is because the overall objective of this pilot is to enhance transparency to get greater certainty into the process.

“The greater the certainty the more objective the process can be and this means less subjectivity in things like scoring for various bids. We must minimise the possibility for subjective decision making and have a process that is more objective and more open to scrutiny, more understandable and therefore more transparent,” MEC Vadi said. 

The Open Tender Pilot project was launched in November last year to improve transparency in the award of contracts in line with supply chain management provisions of the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA).

Issued by the Gauteng Provincial Government