Roko loses IGG tower contract

Kampala. The Joint Venture of Roko Construction Limited and Roko Construction (Rwanda) Ltd has for the second time lost the contract to build the multibillion headquarters for the office of Inspectorate General of Government (IGG) after an appeals tribunal upheld an earlier decision by the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority (PPDA).

The PPDA Appeals Tribunal on March 26, upheld the decision of PPDA ordering the IGG Contracts Evaluation Committee to re-evaluate the bids submitted by the seven firms competing for the contract.
The IGG office, which rents space along Parliamentary Avenue, is set to construct a tower worth more than Shs100b for its headquarters on Clement Hill Road in Nakasero, Kampala.

The Roko Construction Limited and Roko Construction (Rwanda) had jointly appealed the February 25 PPDA order to the IGG to re-evaluate the bids following a petition by China State Construction Engineering Corporation, one of the bidders.
The firm had been eliminated from the competition on grounds that it submitted Articles of Association that were not translated by Makerere University Institute of Languages.

In their decision, a copy of which Daily Monitor has obtained, the PPDA Appeals Tribunal chaired by Ms Olive Zaale Otete, held that the IGG Evaluation Committee, erred in eliminating China State Construction Engineering Corporation by not asking the firm to submit a translated version of the Articles and Memorandum of Association after finding that the one in the bid application was in Chinese.
“Regulation 10(1) of PPDA (Evaluation) Regulations 2014 provides that an evaluation committee may at any stage of the evaluation, request a bidder to clarify the information provided in the bid documents or to submit addition documentation to clarity the information provided.

“The Tribunal notes that the Memorandum and Articles of association was already submitted as part of the bid document. Submission of a translation of an already existing document would not tantamount to alteration or amendment or changing the substance of a bid in contravention of regulations 10(3) of the PPDA Evaluation regulations, 2014,” the reads part of the tribunal decision.
Basing on this ground, the tribunal dismissed the Roko Construction joint appeal against the cancellation of its contract.
The Tribunal comprised, Mr David Kabateraine, Mr Abraham Nkata and Mr Thomas Brookes Isanga.
The IGG announced Roko as the best evaluated bidder on December 18, 2018.

Ms Munira Ali, the IGG spokesperson, confirmed the PPDA tribunal ruling and said they have since embarked on the re-evaluation of the bids.
This is the second time the IGG’s office is directed to repeat the process. The first was in October last year after the PPDA Tribunal on September 26 dismissed another appeal by the Roko joint venture and upheld the PPDA decision of August 26.
The PPDA found the IGG’s internal Procurement and Disposal Unit and Contracts Committee had awarded the contract to Roko which had not fulfilled the bid requirements.
The petition to PPDA was filed by Seyani Brothers & Co (U) Ltd and Parbat Siyani Construction, who were among the bidders eliminated at the evaluation stage.

The PPDA found that Roko had not constructed two 15-storey buildings each worth at least Shs90b in the previous five years as had been stipulated in the bid invitation documents. The joint venture also did not have the Shs20b minimum cash on its bank account to prove its financial soundness as per the specified conditions for the bidding.
Roko appealed the PPDA decision arguing that the authority erred when it found that the firm did not meet the requirement of having accomplished at least two contracts within the previous five years, each worth Shs90b and similar to the proposed work.

Shs20b approved

Re-evaluation. The order for re-evaluation comes at a time when Parliament has approved Shs20b towards the IGG headquarters construction in the 2019/20 Financial Year that was included in the Committee on Physical Infrastructure presented last week.

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