✔️Stage 3: Selection & award

Criteria for awarding tenders

The requirements for a particular tender are set out in the RFP or RFQ document and the winning bidders are usually chosen based on a combination of factors including:

• Do they have the technical ability to do the job? - This characteristic is sometimes referred to as the bidder’s “functionality”.

• Do they have the capacity to do the size of the job? This characteristic is sometimes referred to as the bidder’s “functionality”.

• What previous participation in the supply chain has the organisation had, have any problems been flagged?

• Are there any conflicts of interest?

• How do their B-BBEE credentials measure up?

• Does the bid meet the RFP’s requirements to make use of a certain percentage of local content (local suppliers or locally-made goods)?

• Who had the lowest priced bid?

‍Usually the highest scoring bidder will win the bid. However sometimes objective criteria may allow the procuring entity to award to bidder who did not score the highest but may have met a special requirement that is identified in the RFP. These special requirements must be mentioned in the RFP.

What to watch for:

Although prices of bids should be read out in public, in practice this is an exception. Usually, bid prices are kept secret until bids awarded.

It is important that ordinary citizens, journalists and members of civil society are able to attend bid-opening sessions.

Sometimes bid closure and opening dates are scheduled at inconvenient times, eg. the day before Christmas. This makes monitoring very difficult.

The Bid Evaluation Committee (BEC)

• The Bid Evaluation Committee is a team of people from the procuring entity.

• This committee will evaluate each bid based on a points system which was described in the RFP.

• For the BEC to conduct its work diligently, the criteria for awarding points should be clear and practical to evaluate. This is something that must be borne in mind when the RFP is drafted.

• Bids are usually evaluated using a two stage process.

• STAGE 1: TECHNICAL QUALIFICATION The bidder’s skill and experience enabling it complete the job properly.

• STAGE 2: PRICE AND B-BBEE STATUS Only the pricing and B-BBEE status will be considered for bidders who are technically qualified. If, as a supplier, you do not have the technical skill to perform a job, your pricing is irrelevant.

• The BEC will add up the scores for each bidder to assess if they meet the threshold for STAGE 1, as stated in the bid documents. For example, if the technical threshold is 70 points, then only bidders who achieve 70 points and above will be assessed in STAGE 2, for price and B-BBEE.

• After Stage 1 and Stage 2 are complete, a Preferred Bidder will be selected.

What to watch for:

BEC meetings are not open to the public and minutes from these meetings are not made public.

The BEC’s recommendations for a preferred bidder are not made public.

The criteria for awarding points, as well as points awarded to bidders, should be open to the public so that the procurement process can be monitored.

The Bid Adjudication Committee (BAC)

• The Bid Adjudication Committee must ensure that the criteria were applied correctly by the BEC and the process was fair to all bidders.

• If all is above board, the BAC must make a recommendation to the Accounting Officer of the procuring entity to approve the Preferred Bidder.

• Once the Accounting Officer has approved the selection of the Preferred Bidder, a letter of appointment will be prepared.

What to watch for:

BAC meetings are not open to the public and minutes from these meetings are not made public.

These documents should be published on the websites of the procuring entity and the relevant treasury, however, practice in this regard is uneven.

Some entities publish documents proactively on their websites, however, one must be registered on the entity’s database to gain access, and registration is limited to bidding parties. It is not available to interested third parties. An example of an entity using this method is PetroSA.

Some entities practice open procurement immediately from the time that the BAC makes a decision. An example is the Gauteng Open Procurement project. However, the extent of this openness varies as it is still up to individual entities to exercise discretion in this regard.