Disqualified bidder: “Capitol’s evaluation ‘grossly erroneous’”

CEBU, Philippines - One of the bidders of the P250-million heavy equipment has told the Capitol’s Bids and Awards Committee that the evaluation and conclusion resulting to its disqualification were “grossly erroneous.”

This was the claim  of  Civic Merchandising, Inc. in its letter dated November 11 after BAC chaired by lawyer Mark Tolentino awarded the supply of brand new construction light and heavy equipment to ConEquip Philippines, Inc., the highest among the three bidders. 

BAC pointed out that Civic did not comply with the specifications of equipment required when it offered Angle Dozer instead of Straight Dozer for brand new Crawler Tractor and 74 engine horsepower (hp) instead of minimum of 100 hp for brand new Vibratory Roller. 

But Civic assistant vice president for Visayas Operations, Benito Jomoc, cited BAC’s own Supplemental/Bid Bulletin Addendum No. 15-36 specifying clearly that the requirement is “Angle or Straight Dozer.”

“While your required Engine Horsepower (hp) is 100 Hp (min), our bid offer showed our model SD110 has Engine Power of 99Kw (kilowatts). One way of converting Kw to Hp is to divide the Kw by 0.746, thus our offer is 132.7 Hp, clearly above your MINIMUM requirement of 100 Hp,” Jomoc told Tolentino. 

“How you arrived at our offer to be 74 Hp, we can only surmise that instead of kw/0.746=Hp, your staff might have multiplied the Kw by the factor 0.746, thus 99Kw x 0.746=73.458 or round off is 74Hp. This is therefore GROSSLY ERRONEOUS,” Jomoc further said.

Having explained their position, Jomoc said they expect BAC to accept the true facts and figures, and thereby consider their bid offer to be complying. 

Jomoc also asked for the cancellation of the Notice of Post-Disqualification and issue them instead a Notice of Post-Qualification. 

Aside from Civic Merchandising, Inc. and ConEquip Phils, Inc., RDAK Transport Equipment, Inc. and TKC Heavy Industries Corp. responded to BAC’s invitation to bid.

During the opening of bids on September 7, the prospective bidders submitted their eligibility, technical and financial documents. Civic and RDAK were then declared passed and eligible.

 BAC had declared ConEquip as “failed” on the ground that its technical document was incomplete since it was not notarized while TKC also did not have “end-user’s acceptance.” 

BAC declared RDAK and Civic as the only bidders to have complied with the requirements. RDAK has the lowest bid price of P235,050,000 while Civic has a bid price of P237,168,000. 

However, ConEquip filed a motion for reconsideration which BAC accepted. Its technical and financial component and documents were opened on September 30 and it was found out that it has bid the amount of P250,600,336. 

During the post-evaluation, BAC found RDAK and Civic to have failed to comply some of the required specifications while the highest bidder, which is the ConEquip, reportedly complied all the required specifications. — (FREEMAN)