TSTT has de­nied it was re­spon­si­ble for the in­ter­net dip on the e-Ten­der plat­form which caused one of the bids for the re­de­vel­op­ment of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Cen­tral Block to go  un­no­ticed by UDe­COTT when the ten­der­ing process closed last month.

Ear­ly this week, UDe­COTT said TSTT had not­ed a tem­po­rary dis­rup­tion in In­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty dur­ing the up­load process which lead to on­ly two of the three bids be­ing seen when the e-Ten­der box was checked at 4.05 pm on May 20, five min­utes af­ter the process of­fi­cial­ly closed. The “miss­ing” bid by Uni­ver­sal Struc­ture Lim­it­ed, which was even­tu­al­ly se­lect­ed by Ude­COTT was re­port­ed logged at 12.16 pm on that day.

The oth­er bids came from Yorke Struc­tures and Steel Struc­tures.

How­ev­er TSTT stat­ed in a re­lease on Wednes­day, that the ser­vice drop was not the fault of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny.

TSTT said, “A due dili­gence as­sess­ment con­duct­ed by TSTT’s ICT in­fra­struc­ture and cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty en­gi­neers re­vealed that UDe­COTT’s in­abil­i­ty to ac­cess the bid sub­mis­sion for Uni­ver­sal Struc­tures Lim­it­ed was caused by a tem­po­rary dis­rup­tion in in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty with the ven­dor’s In­ter­net Provider when the ven­dor was up­load­ing its com­pa­ny’s bid sub­mis­sion. TSTT is not that ven­dor’s In­ter­net Ser­vice Provider.”

TSTT said, “It is crit­i­cal for TSTT to re­it­er­ate that the con­nec­tiv­i­ty is­sue or “tech­ni­cal glitch” was ex­ter­nal to TSTT and the e-Ten­der plat­form. Any such at­tri­bu­tion is un­found­ed.”

The com­pa­ny de­fend­ed its plat­form fur­ther stat­ing, “TSTT’s e-Ten­der plat­form is built on the tenets of trans­paren­cy, fair­ness, ac­count­abil­i­ty and se­cu­ri­ty. De­vel­oped in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices, e-Ten­der op­er­ates in full com­pli­ance with na­tion­al leg­is­la­tion and has suc­cess­ful­ly ad­dressed some of the peren­ni­al chal­lenges as­so­ci­at­ed with tra­di­tion­al ten­der­ing. e-Ten­der is a ro­bust soft­ware that is backed by one of the most cer­ti­fied da­ta cen­tres in the re­gion - TSTT’s TIA-942-B Rat­ed 3, DCOS Ma­tu­ri­ty Lev­el 3, and SOC Type 2 da­ta cen­tre.”

TSTT said it recog­nised re­ports which ques­tioned the “in­tegri­ty of the plat­form and the ten­der­ing process” and as re­sult “has en­gaged an ex­ter­nal in­de­pen­dent par­ty to con­firm that all doc­u­ments were lodged be­fore the clos­ing time and that the process was trans­par­ent.”