The dis­qui­et ex­pressed by lo­cal con­trac­tors and one Op­po­si­tion politi­cian, over the de­ci­sion by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) to an­nounce its in­ten­tion to award a large hous­ing con­tract to a com­pa­ny called Chi­na Har­bour En­gi­neer­ing Com­pa­ny (CHEC), is ex­pect­ed to test the chal­lenge pro­ceed­ings of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion.

Chal­lenge pro­ceed­ings al­low a sup­pli­er or con­trac­tor to ap­ply to the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) to re­view a de­ci­sion or ac­tion tak­en by a procur­ing en­ti­ty (in this case, the HDC) in a pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ing.

Those pro­ceed­ings are gov­erned by the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, the rel­e­vant reg­u­la­tions, spe­cif­ic rules and pro­ce­dures for chal­lenge pro­ceed­ings, as well as elec­tron­ic fil­ing and hear­ing rules.

The chal­lenge pro­ceed­ings in this case in­volve the HDC’s eval­u­a­tion of nine sub­mis­sions for the San­ta Rosa Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports in this news­pa­per, CHEC sub­mit­ted a bid to de­sign and con­struct 644 hous­ing units at a cost per unit of $738,871.12. The Chi­nese com­pa­ny’s pro­pos­al, on a cost-per-unit ba­sis, was the low­est. The com­pa­ny re­port­ed to be the sec­ond-ranked bid­der, pro­posed to build 226 hous­ing units at $768,928.14 per unit.

There­fore, based on the val­ue-for-mon­ey propo­si­tion, which is cen­tral to the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act, it seems to be ap­pro­pri­ate that the HDC has an­nounced its in­ten­tion to award the con­tract to the Chi­nese firm. This as­sumes, of course, that the ac­tu­al eval­u­a­tion process was trans­par­ent, com­plete­ly above board and can with­stand strong scruti­ny.

If the HDC was jus­ti­fied in de­cid­ing that CHEC should be first-ranked, based on its low­er cost per unit, the is­sue then be­comes whether the Chi­nese com­pa­ny fol­lowed all as­pects of the HDC Re­quest For Pro­pos­als, in­clud­ing stip­u­la­tions stip­u­lat­ed in the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion’s out­line plan­ning per­mis­sion for the San­ta Rosa Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment on the min­i­mum size of the hous­ing units and the mix be­tween sin­gle-fam­i­ly units to town­hous­es. Al­so im­por­tant for a de­vel­op­ment such as this is the avail­abil­i­ty of on-site park­ing, wa­ter tank farms and recre­ation­al spaces.

In its news re­lease on Tues­day, the HDC al­so clar­i­fied that all par­tic­i­pat­ing com­pa­nies were reg­is­tered on the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion’s (OPR) de­pos­i­to­ry and were there­fore deemed el­i­gi­ble for par­tic­i­pa­tion.

The sug­ges­tion that on­ly lo­cal com­pa­nies should be al­lowed to bid on con­tracts is­sued by state-owned en­ti­ties is con­trary to the prac­tice of this ad­min­is­tra­tion and pre­vi­ous ones. For­eign com­pe­ti­tion, once it is fair, serves to dri­ve down costs, as well as trans­fer knowl­edge of new tech­niques and meth­ods of con­struc­tion. If lo­cal com­pa­nies can op­er­ate through­out the re­gion, there is no rea­son why for­eign com­pa­nies should be barred from op­er­at­ing lo­cal­ly.

The HDC al­so said, “Fur­ther, all com­pa­nies were re­quired to pro­vide statu­to­ry doc­u­ments and to com­plete a le­gal de­c­la­ra­tion form that pro­vid­ed de­tails on their lit­i­ga­tion his­to­ry.”

If com­pa­nies with the same ben­e­fi­cial own­er as the T&T sub­sidiary of CHEC have been sub­ject­ed to lit­i­ga­tion, this should have been dis­closed to the HDC.

All in­ter­est­ed par­ties should, there­fore, al­low the OPR to re­view the HDC’s de­ci­sion-mak­ing pro­ce­dures and out­comes, be­fore jump­ing to con­clu­sions that are un­jus­ti­fied, giv­en the avail­able facts.