DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Nipdec) has been or­dered to ter­mi­nate the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar con­tract for the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port’s Val­sayn Av­enue Bridge.

The or­der was made by a three-mem­ber tri­bunal of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tions (OPR) in a de­ci­sion hand­ed down yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the de­ci­sion stems from one of the first com­plaints made to the OPR since new pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion took ef­fect ear­li­er this year.

It was al­so said to be the first time the OPR utilised its pow­ers un­der the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Prop­er­ty Act to or­der the ter­mi­na­tion of a con­tract due to breach­es of the leg­is­la­tion.

In its or­der, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the tri­bunal, chaired by Sparkle Kirk-Sel­man and in­clud­ing mem­bers David Charlerie and Herdis Lee Chee, stat­ed that the pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dure used by Nipdec con­tra­vened sec­tion 5(1)(b) of the leg­is­la­tion, as it utilised eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria not dis­closed to pro­po­nents be­fore they sub­mit­ted their tech­ni­cal pro­pos­als.

Le­gal sources said that the tri­bunal, which heard le­gal sub­mis­sions in the case ear­li­er this week, is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide de­tailed rea­sons for its de­ci­sion at a lat­er date.

On Sep­tem­ber 19, Kall Co Lim­it­ed (Kall­co), through its le­gal team led by at­tor­ney Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, asked the OPR to re­view the award of a con­tract for the Val­sayn Av­enue Bridge re­con­struc­tion and as­so­ci­at­ed works un­der­tak­en by the min­istry’s Project Man­age­ment Unit un­der the Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE).

Short­ly af­ter, an­oth­er OPR tri­bunal is­sued an in­junc­tion stop­ping the project pend­ing the out­come of the case.

In June, Nipdec in­vit­ed ten­ders for the project and nine com­pa­nies in­clud­ing Kall­co sub­mit­ted bids but one did not sub­mit valid com­pli­ance cer­tifi­cates.

On Sep­tem­ber 9, Nipdec in­di­cat­ed that Maraj Hill had been award­ed the con­tract for $15,118,140.88.

Kall­co’s bid was the sec­ond low­est at $13,213,752.75. The oth­er un­suc­cess­ful bid­ders in­clud­ed Ju­nior Sam­my Con­trac­tors and Lutch­meesingh Trans­port Con­trac­tors Ltd.

Nipdec in­di­cat­ed that Kall­co failed the tech­ni­cal ap­proach, method­ol­o­gy and pro­gramme of ex­e­cu­tion of works.

It fur­ther stat­ed that the firm pro­vid­ed gener­ic in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to the key com­po­nents of the works.

“In­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing shoring, de­mo­li­tion of the ex­ist­ing bridge, con­struc­tion of the abut­ment base and oth­er area of the scope such as in­stal­la­tion of drainage lay­er be­hind abut­ment and re­tain­ing wall, struc­tur­al back­fill be­hind abut­ment and re­tain­ing wall, and ero­sion con­trol mea­sures was ei­ther vague or not men­tioned,” Nipdec stat­ed.

While the min­i­mum score for this cat­e­go­ry was 34 points, Nipdec said Kall­co scored 27.75, while Maraj Hill scored 90.5 points out of 100 in the tech­ni­cal/fi­nan­cial eval­u­a­tion.

In its com­plaint, Kall­co con­tend­ed that the ten­der rules were not ob­served. It al­so al­leged Nipdec did not prop­er­ly, fair­ly, com­pe­tent­ly, and law­ful­ly as­sess its tech­ni­cal bid.

The firm fur­ther claimed that Nipdec’s de­ci­sion to “fail” them was not prop­er­ly ex­plained and/or par­tic­u­larised and its as­sess­ment of the com­pa­ny’s tech­ni­cal ap­proach is sub­jec­tive, er­ro­neous, un­law­ful and not in keep­ing with the oblig­a­tions ex­pressed and/or im­plied un­der the ten­der oblig­a­tions.

It fur­ther claimed that Nipdec did not rea­son­ably seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the “pur­port­ed vague­ness or any­thing be­ing gener­ic” un­der sec­tion 33 of the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tions.

It al­so point­ed out that Maraj Hill’s bid was al­most iden­ti­cal to the es­ti­mates set by Nipdec’s in­ter­nal en­gi­neers.

Kall­co was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Ste­fan Ramkissoon and Karuna Maraj of Sov­er­eign Cham­bers.

Ed­i­tor's note: In an ear­li­er ver­sion of this sto­ry, we in­ac­cu­rate­ly used a pho­to of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board of T&T in­stead of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Nipdec). Our apolo­gies for the er­ror.