Reverse tendering guidelines issued: Adityanath Das

Amaravati: The state government released fresh guidelines for reverse tendering process, a new initiative by Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy in executing the tenders, contracts and auctions related to public works.

Special Chief Secretary Adityanath Das on Friday said that the guidelines are intended to be applicable for contracts where the government is intended to find out a fair price through a competitive bidding process for the execution of ongoing projects.

In this process, it should be ensured that the prevailing terms and conditions of the contract remain unchanged besides a seamless transfer of responsibilities between the contractors or agencies, he explained.

Before initiating the process of tender-cum-reverse auctioning for ongoing works for which agreements are in force, invariably the agreement should be terminated under appropriate clause of agreement as there is every chance of existing contracting agencies raising objections for fresh reverse tendering process when their agreements are in force.

In this regard, legal opinion may be obtained, if required, before initiating the termination of the existing agreement for avoiding legal complications, according to the guidelines.

After terminating the existing work, the estimated value of the balance work have to be prepared with the original agreement rates which will become the Initial Bench Mark (IBM) value or Estimated Contract Value (ECV) on which tender-cum-E Auction (reverse tendering) shall be proceeded.

It should be existing agreement value minus value of work done that would become the ECV of Reverse bidding, Adityanath Das stated. Restriction clause like Registration in Andhra Pradesh may be relaxed. Joint Venture as well as Memorandum of Understanding with combined bid capacity may be encouraged to ensure larger participation.

If sufficient competition is not expected, feasibility of splitting up or clubbing the balance work terminated from original agency into smaller/larger packages can be examined to encourage more number of bidders.

All bidders shall self-declare their details under each technical and financial criterion on the e-procurement platform along with an undertaking confirming their compliance with the technical and financial criterion prescribed in the bid document.

The price bids of all bidders shall be opened and the lowest quoted price bid among the qualified bidders in the tender process shall be determined. To conduct the reverse tender process, at least two bidders would be required. Only one round of reverse tendering shall be carried out in which bidders can revise their bids multiple times within the time limits specified.

The initial period of the Reverse tendering process will start after 3 hours, following which there will be auto extensions of time by 15 minutes in case of any reduction in bids recorded in the prior 15 minutes.

The reverse tendering process shall continue until the determination of a successful bidder. Water Resources Department is competent to issue any clarification if required. All works departments also have to adopt the same procedure of reverse tendering.