Double evaluation to extend to road maintenance

By Billy Rwothungeyo

During the reading of the budget for the financial year 2013/2014 last week, finance minister Maria Kiwanuka revealed that Independent Parallel Bid Evaluation (IPBE) will be extended beyond road construction works and consultancy services.

“Independent Parallel Bid Evaluation has contributed to the reduction in national road costs and will be extended to national road maintenance to enhance value for money,” she said.

In this kind of evaluation, an independent offshore company and a The Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) evaluation team submit their reports of a bidding process to the contracts committees.

“Internal and external evaluators get the same bid copies, they then do their independent evaluations and come up with their independent recommendations,” Ayalew Kebede, UNRA’s acting director of procurement explains.

The contracts committee then reviews both reports to determine if variances exist and find out the reasons for such a difference.

UNRA is gearing to roll out this double-faced evaluation for major road maintenance works in the next financial year.

IPBE was first introduced in April 2011 in the face of complaints towards UNRA’s procurement process.

The roads authority had to seek accreditation from the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority (PPDA) for the introduction of the scheme.

“When UNRA started operations, procurement of works stalled because contractors were busy fighting for jobs and some were even threatening our lives. The system was not transparent enough and we ended up awarding some contracts to companies that failed to deliver. In the last two years we have had less than five appeals out of the many major projects we have procured,” Dan Alinange, UNRA’s head of corporate communications said.

While the IPBE is applicable to major road works that are above $10m, maintenance works in the region of $20m will be subject to the scheme. This will cover term maintenance contracts, bridge works, road resealing works and other major maintenance works.

UNRA will work with development partners such as the European Union, World Bank and the East African Development Bank as the authority bids to make its procurement function more efficient.

UNRA hopes the number of appeals will reduce with the parallel evaluation in the road maintenance sub-sector that is riddled with lack of transparency and fairness.

Bidder confidence boost

Upon adopting the IPBE, the World Bank says complaints regarding UNRA’s procurement function have reduced from 16 in 2009 to four in 2011.

Commenting on UNRA’s move to adopt the parallel evaluation scheme, Howard Centenary, a senior procurement specialist at the World Bank Uganda office hailed the move.

“The benefits of this approach are to improve transparency of the process which also reduces complaints from bidders and contributes to a more efficient procurement,” he says.

Centenary says: “The transparency increases bidder confidence in the procuring agency which leads to increased bidder participation and a more competitive process resulting in potentially lower costs of road construction.”