Para 4.3 — WORKS_MANUAL

Example 1: Fixation of Days by CPWD

Region Days for Issuance of NITs Days for Tender Opening Delhi Monday Monday Northern Tuesday Tuesday Southern Wednesday Wednesday Eastern Thursday Thursday Western Friday Friday

“This notice is being published for information only and is not an open invitation to quote in this limited tender. Participation in this tender is by invitation only and is limited to the selected Procuring Entity’s enlisted contractors. Unsolicited offers are liable to be ignored. However, contractors who desire to participate in such tenders in future may apply for enlistment with Procuring Entity as per procedure.”

Printouts of the tenders published on the website should be collected and kept on record as a proof of publicity. The complete details of the dates, on which advertisements actually appeared on the website, should be indicated while sending cases to higher authorities.

In order to increase certainty in the procurement process, all Ministries/Departments shall fix days in every month for issuance of Notice Inviting Tender (NIT), and Tender Opening across various locations, divisions or levels. For example, the tenders may be released by the Ministries/Departments three times a month, i.e., on 10th, 20thand 30th of every month and the bid submission dates are so determined that bids are opened only on fixed scheduled dates, viz, 7th, 17thand 27thof every month. In case there are practical difficulties due to large volume of tenders in having fixed days across the whole organisation, the Ministries/Departments/CPSUs may decide to have region-wise, zone-wise, or division-wise fixed days for issuance of NIT and Opening of Tenders. For procurement of highly technological and complex works, tender submission dates may be extended by the Ministries/Departments/CPSUs in order to reply queries in the pre-bid meetings or any other justifiable reason. For example, CPWD, which is a large procurer of works have region-wise fixed days for issuance of NITs and opening of tenders as per the following table:

4.3 Publication of Bid Documents It is mandatory for all Ministries/ Departments of the Central Government, their attached and Subordinate Offices and Autonomous /Statutory Bodies to publish their tender enquiries, corrigenda thereon and details of bid awards on the Central Public Procurement Portal (CPPP)34. If the department has its own website/ e-Procurement Portal, it should also publish all its advertised tender enquiries on such website/ Portal also. GFR 2017 has dispensed with advertisements in Newspapers. However, in exceptional circumstances, procuring entities may issue the advertisement in newspapers as deemed fit. Such advertisement should also consist of the link of website from where the detailed advertisement and bidding document can be seen and downloaded. Individual cases where confidentiality is required, for reasons of national security, would be exempted from the mandatory e-publishing requirement. The decision to exempt any case on the said grounds should be approved by the Secretary of the Ministry/ Department with the concurrence of the concerned Financial Advisor. In the case of Autonomous Bodies and Statutory Bodies’ approval of the Head of the Body with the concurrence of the Head of the Finance should be obtained in each such case. Statistical information on the number of cases in which exemption was granted and the value of the concerned contract should be intimated on a Quarterly basis to the Ministry of Finance, Department of Expenditure. In order to promote wider participation and ease of bidding, no cost of tender document may be charged for the tender documents downloaded by the bidders. To ensure competition, attention of all likely tenderers, for example, enlisted vendors, past contractors and other known potential contractors, should be invited to the NIT through email/ SMSs/ letters. In e-procurement, the website may be programmed to generate these alerts automatically. In case of procurement through a limited tender, the NIT may be uploaded on CPPP Portal and Procuring Entity’s website with a note saying:

4.4 Issue/ Availability and Cost of tender documents The sale/ availability for downloading of tender documents against NIT should not be restricted. Tender documents should preferably be sold/ available for download up to the date of opening of tenders. The organization should also post the complete tender document in its web site and on CPPP to enable prospective tenderers to make use of the document downloaded from the web site. The advertisement for invitation of tenders should give complete web-address from where bid documents can be downloaded. The procuring entity shall maintain proper records about the number of tender documents sold, list of parties to whom sold, details of the amount received through sale and, also, the number of unsold tender documents, which are to be cancelled after the opening of the tenders.

(i) One week in the case of works with estimated cost put to tender up to Rs.2 crore and two weeks in the case of works with estimated cost more than Rs.2 crore. If there is holiday on a particular day, the day of inviting/uploading NIT may be proposed to earlier day and opening of tender may be postponed to next day.

(ii) However, in case of exigencies of work, the Chief Engineer/Chief Project Manager or equivalent can allow to call and open tenders on another day instead of specific fixed days.