The tendering process in India and how it is its own Achilles’ heel…

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The government and many other organizations use the tendering method to buy goods and services. The tender process is good because it lets you get quotes from multiple vendors, which makes for fair competition and a good outcome. This procedure is followed in almost every nation and is roughly the same everywhere. Check out Defence Tenders

In most tenders, the scope of work section includes a list of the organization’s requirements and product or service specifications. The specific set of criteria in the RFP (Request for Proposal)—generally referred to as “pre-qualification criteria”—must depending on the type and size of the organization, limit the tender to genuine parties with the capacity to deliver without compromising quality.

The tender’s three stages of evaluation:

Evaluation of the pre-qualification clauses Technical evaluation Commercial evaluation The bidder is required to thoroughly examine the pre-qualification clauses outlined in the tender. If they satisfy all of the necessary criteria, the bidder is given the go-ahead to proceed with the tendering process. A bidder is disqualified from the bidding process if, during evaluation, the organization discovers that they do not possess the necessary credentials or have not provided the necessary documentary proof for the aforementioned criteria.

Every bidder submits an EMD (Earnest Money Deposit) as part of their proposal to guarantee their serious participation in the entire tendering process. EMD ranges from 2% to 10% of the total tender value and is dependent on the tender’s size. Bidders are typically required to provide the EMD in the form of a Demand Draft or a Bank Guarantee, though online payments are increasingly accepted. This EMD stays with the organization for as long as the organization deems necessary to complete the tendering process, typically between three and nine months.

Bidders are disqualified and their EMD forfeited if found to have breached or deviated from the fair tendering process and if they do so, they will be disqualified. Additionally, these suppliers and bidders are “blacklisted” from participating in any national tendering process.

The bidder who qualifies in every one of the three phases of the delicate and has the most minimal of the multitude of costs is reported as the champ for that specific delicate. Even though this is a very common practice (known as L1), there is another way to choose the bidder that is becoming more and more popular. The Quality Cost Based Evaluation System, or QCBS, is the name given to this strategy.

The QCBS method assigns points to each stage of the RFP—for instance, “x” marks for pre-qualification, “y” marks for technical evaluation, and “z” marks for commercial evaluation. Because the evaluation is more focused on the solution’s technical superiority than on its commercial aspect, it is crucial for a bidder to receive the highest possible score in the technical bid under this method. This also indicates that winning the tender does not necessitate placing the lowest in commercials among the bidders. It is anticipated that the bidder with the highest scores in technical evaluation and pre-qualification will be more able to provide the highest quality.

The above-mentioned tendering procedure appears to be foolproof on the surface, but the reality is somewhat a different case…