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This engineer may have misinterpreted the requirements of the project

Nov 01, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
In a KN Article of Oct. 28, it was reported that Charles Ceres of Ground Structures Engineering Consultants, Inc. stated that with respect to his bid for consultancy service to supervise reconstruction of an earthen dam on the East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC), the Evaluation Committee of the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) rejected his submission on the premise that its technical approach and methodology did not take into consideration the approved construction supervision and quality assurance plan.
The Committee further discounted Mr. Ceres’s claim that the project was geotechnical engineering based since it claimed that the main objective of the project was to supervise the reconstruction of an earthen dam based on the drawing and specifications submitted to the bidders. There is no doubt that geotechnical experience by the successful bidder would have been helpful in executing this project. However, in the final analysis the consultant would have had to follow the requirements of the contract documents and prepare their bids accordingly.
In response to the rejection of his bid, Mr. Ceres questioned the fairness of the tender process and felt that the Evaluation Committee of the MoA was either biased or technically incompetent in its analysis. This statement was unfortunate as this is a World Bank (WB) funded project and therefore the MoA had to follow the WB’s guidelines for the selection of consultants. Further, it appears Mr. Ceres misinterpreted the bidding documents as the project required consultants with experience to reconstruct earthen dams and not specifically with geotechnical expertise as he claimed.
Mr. Ceres cannot lodge any complain concerning his bid directly to the WB until the bids are opened and presented by the MoA to the WB with a recommendation for an award. He will have to submit his protest to the WB through Guyana’s Director on the WB who will then determine its merit for submission to WB management and Board of Directors for review and consideration.
It will be helpful to Mr. Ceres’s cause if he could obtain a copy of the bidders’ evaluation by the Evaluation Committee to compare the scores received by them under the various items of the WB listed requirements particularly the local consultants vis-a-vis the foreign ones. He is conversant with the competency, resources and experience of the local consultants to undertake this project and whose performances on the various Government projects they executed are well documented. The scores will indicate whether there was indeed bias or lack of competency by the MoA in the award of this contract. If there was any ‘hanky panky’ in analysis of the bids the WB’s review team of the bids will surely pick this up.
Charles Sohan

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