A con­fi­den­tial sev­en-page re­port, sub­mit­ted by Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine de­tails eight rea­sons why Cou­va-based Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices Ltd (SISL) earned the con­tro­ver­sial bil­lion-dol­lar Beetham Wa­ter Re­cy­cling Plant project.Ram­nar­ine had man­dat­ed NGC to pro­vide a re­port on the ten­der and award process amid calls from the Op­po­si­tion that the mas­sive con­tract was award­ed to a com­pa­ny owned by known gov­ern­ment fi­nancier, Kr­ish­na Lal­la.

While Ram­nar­ine ver­bal­ly pre­sent­ed some of the de­tails with­in the re­port dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion at Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, the Sun­day Guardian ob­tained a copy of the re­port which praised SISL for hav­ing an over­all "su­pe­ri­or" pro­pos­al. It al­so com­pared NGC's own project es­ti­mate of US$149,999,000 to Al­tatec's US$95,224,643 and SISL's US$167,755,329.

One of Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley's main con­cerns with the award was that it was giv­en to SISL even though their bid price was much high­er than the near­est bid­der. The re­port notes that the price dif­fer­ence be­tween the two bids worked in SISL's favour."In post-bid clar­i­fi­ca­tions, Al­tatec not­ed sev­er­al ar­eas where they may seek to re­vis­it the price sub­mit­ted for ex­am­ple, changes in glob­al steel prices and soil con­di­tions," the re­port not­ed.

This com­pared poor­ly with SISL's bid which, ac­cord­ing to the re­port, al­ready made al­lowances for the En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ment and soil con­di­tions. The Cou­va-based com­pa­ny al­so com­mit­ted it­self to one vari­a­tion which would be based on any in­crease of the glob­al steel prices.The re­port, which was dat­ed March 13, 2014, ar­rived at the con­clu­sion that Al­tatec's low­er bid "con­tained sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­low mar­ket val­ue 'el­e­ments' which is sub­ject to high­er lev­els of vari­abil­i­ty in their prices would be ex­pect­ed."

One of the ex­am­ples list­ed in the re­port states that NGC's in-house es­ti­mate for the pipeline unit rate per me­ter (sup­plied and in­stalled) was USD $1,700, SISL bid USD$ 1,339.72 per me­ter, while Al­tatec bid at USD $525 per me­ter."This rate is con­sid­ered ex­treme­ly low when com­pared with the in-house es­ti­mate and sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased the risk of vari­abil­i­ty," the re­port stat­ed. (RS)

SISL vs Al­tatec's bid

SISL:

1. SISL scored 77.93 per cent in the tech­ni­cal eval­u­a­tion (54.55 out of 70.00)

2. SISL com­plied in main with the plant de­sign pro­posed in the RFP and ac­tu­al­ly pro­vid­ed a su­pe­ri­or de­sign.

3. SISL pro­posed a su­pe­ri­or pipeline method­ol­o­gy.

4. SISL sub­mit­ted a su­pe­ri­or con­struc­tion pro­gramme.

5. SISL in­for­ma­tion sub­mit­ted on RO pumps was of su­pe­ri­or qual­i­ty.

6. SISL pro­pos­al has greater lo­cal con­tent.

7. SISL de­sign team has ex­ten­sive mem­brane plant ex­pe­ri­ence.

8. SISL in­di­cat­ed that on­ly if glob­al steel prices changed they may con­sid­er ap­ply­ing for a vari­a­tion in the con­tract price. SISL con­firmed that EIA and soil con­di­tions risks were con­sid­ered in their bid. Their bid price can be con­sid­ered firm (apart from vari­a­tion in world steel prices) hav­ing a high de­gree of con­fi­dence and con­se­quent­ly sub­ject to low vari­abil­i­ty.

Al­tatec:

1. Al­tatec scored 52.71 per cent in the tech­ni­cal eval­u­a­tion (36.90 out of 70.00)

2. Al­tatec's de­vi­a­tion in the plant de­sign as pro­posed in the RFP in­creased the risks as­so­ci­at­ed with plant main­te­nance.

3. Al­tatec failed to pro­vide a de­tailed pipeline con­struc­tion method­ol­o­gy even af­ter sev­er­al re­quests dur­ing the bid clar­i­fi­ca­tion ex­er­cise.

4. Al­tatec's con­struc­tion pro­gramme was not com­pre­hen­sive.

5. Al­tatec's over­all price was 46 per cent low­er than the in-house es­ti­mate, sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creas­ing the risk of com­plet­ing the project with­in the pro­posed price.

6. Al­tatec con­firmed three to five per cent of risk con­tin­gency in their price, this is ex­treme­ly low for a de­sign and build project of this type with the like­li­hood of sev­er­al re­quest for vari­a­tion of the con­tract price (if award­ed) via vari­a­tion or­ders and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of in­creased cost dur­ing im­ple­men­ta­tion.

7. Al­tatec iden­ti­fied glob­al steel price in­creas­es, vari­a­tions in the EIA, and soil con­di­tion risks as fac­tors which would con­tribute to price in­creas­es. In ef­fect, Al­tatec has, in fact, sig­nalled its bid price is sub­ject to high­er lev­els of vari­abil­i­ty re­sult­ing in a low­er lev­el of con­fi­dence in the pro­posed price.