Two State com­pa­nies–the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (UDE­COTT) and the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT)–are de­fend­ing a "tech­ni­cal glitch" which caused UDE­COTT's e-Ten­der plat­form to in­tro­duce a third bid­der on the Port-of -Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Cen­tral Block project days af­ter the bid­ding was closed.

At the close of bid­ding on Fri­day, May 20, two bid­ders and their re­spec­tive prices were list­ed as suc­cess­ful­ly up­loaded on the e-ten­der plat­form which is man­aged by UDE­COTT but tech­no­log­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed by TSTT.

On Fri­day, af­ter the bids were in and the ten­der was of­fi­cial­ly closed, two com­pa­nies–Yorke Struc­tures and Steel Struc­tures–were the on­ly two com­pa­nies list­ed as suc­cess­ful and both were told to pre­pare for a pre­sen­ta­tion of their method­ol­o­gy the com­ing Mon­day. How­ev­er, af­ter both pre­sen­ta­tions, they were on­ly then in­formed that a third com­pa­ny was al­so in the mix and would be pre­sent­ing the same day.

Con­trac­tors speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian un­der the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty for fear of State vic­tim­i­sa­tion said the third bid­der had an un­fair ad­van­tage in that the com­pa­ny saw the oth­er two bids, while the oth­er two com­pa­nies thought they were com­pet­ing on­ly against each oth­er.

The is­sue has left mem­bers of the con­struc­tion in­dus­try up in arms.

The of­fice of the Ten­der Sec­re­tary at UDE­COTT on Fri­day de­fend­ed the process, say­ing that it was a tem­po­rary and sud­den loss of in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty that led to the in­com­plete list of suc­cess­ful con­trac­tors.

But con­trac­tors said that the whole thing was "com­plete­ly un­fair" and "han­dled poor­ly".

They are ques­tion­ing how a third bid­der could have been suc­cess­ful when the plat­form for ten­der up­load shuts down af­ter the time ex­pires.

"If you look at the fi­nal page on Fri­day, it shows the two bid­ders and their re­spec­tive ten­der price, this means that the third bid­der saw the oth­er two bids and was able to pre­pare bet­ter for the pre­sen­ta­tion," one con­trac­tor said.

The con­trac­tor said that the oth­er two bid­ders were at a marked dis­ad­van­tage.

One bid­der, came in at just over $400 mil­lion while a sec­ond bid­der came in at $150 mil­lion, and the third bid­der came in at $106 mil­lion.

The RF­Ps were sent out on April 19 and the sub­mis­sion dead­line was set at May 17, which was lat­er re­vised to May 20.

Ac­cord­ing to the RFP, the pro­pos­al must be sub­mit­ted by 4 pm on May 20 and does make al­lowances for tech­ni­cal glitch­es.

It states that "pro­po­nents are re­quired to sub­mit their pro­pos­als via UDE­COTT’s e-Ten­der plat­form. Pro­po­nents are ad­vised that sub­mis­sions must in­clude ALL the doc­u­ments as set forth in the RFP and must be in ac­cor­dance with the terms there­in. Pro­po­nents are ad­vised that on­ly PDF files can be up­loaded to the e-Ten­der plat­form. The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for file con­ver­sion re­sides with the Pro­po­nent."

On Fri­day, the of­fice of the ten­der sec­re­tary told the Sun­day Guardian that the RF­Ps for the "Re-de­vel­op­ment of Cen­tral Block at the Port of Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Struc­tur­al Works were is­sued via e-ten­der on April 19, 2022, to five in­vit­ed Pro­po­nents".

The state com­pa­ny con­firmed that at the close of the ten­der, it was on­ly able to ac­cess two of the three sub­mit­ted pro­pos­als.

"The ven­dor used by UDE­COTT for the e-Ten­der Soft­ware, Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (TSTT), was re­quest­ed on Fri­day, May 20, 2022, to rec­ti­fy the tech­ni­cal is­sues en­coun­tered and the in­abil­i­ty to ac­cess the third sub­mit­ted ten­der," UDE­COTT said.

"The ven­dor rec­ti­fied the tech­ni­cal is­sues and the third ten­der sub­mis­sion was re­trieved from the e-Ten­der on Fri­day, May 20, 2022. The third sub­mis­sion was con­firmed by the ven­dor as up­loaded at 12:16 pm on Fri­day, May 20, 2022," UDE­COTT said.

"On Mon­day, May 23, 2022, meet­ings were con­vened with all three pro­po­nents, at which they were no­ti­fied of the mat­ters stat­ed above. At that junc­ture, all three pro­po­nents were un­der­stand­ing of the is­sues," UDE­COTT ex­plained.

But the con­trac­tors are not con­vinced.

One con­trac­tor said that on the UDE­COTT site there was a days-long count­down to the cut-off time and ques­tioned how the one suc­cess­ful bid­der en­coun­tered a glitch at the last minute.

Al­so, ac­cord­ing to UDE­COTT's RFP, the pre­sen­ta­tion as­pect of the method­ol­o­gy made up for some 40 per cent of the over­all score, and con­trac­tors are say­ing that the third hid­den bid­der had the ad­van­tage of know­ing the oth­er two bids and could have pre­pared prop­er­ly.

The Sun­day Guardian reached out to Uni­ver­sal on Thurs­day and Fri­day, but there was no re­sponse.

TSTT: There was a tem­po­rary dis­rup­tion in in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty

On May 26, TSTT wrote to UDE­COTT cit­ing a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion on May 20, which stat­ed that the suc­cess­ful com­pa­ny, Uni­ver­sal Struc­tures Ltd, "suc­cess­ful­ly up­loaded a bid sub­mis­sion" but their sta­tus was record­ed as "no up­load" when the ten­ders were opened.

The TSTT said that its ICT in­fra­struc­ture and Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty En­gi­neers in­ves­ti­gat­ed the is­sue and found that UDE­COTT was un­able to view the three bids due to a" tem­po­rary dis­rup­tion in in­ter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty dur­ing the up­load process, which pre­vent­ed the gen­er­a­tion of the unique Ref­er­ence Key."

The TSTT al­so not­ed that the e-Ten­der plat­form is man­aged by UDE­COTT, but tech­no­log­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed by TSTT.