Tender awards to have detailed bill of quantity

KUALA LUMPUR: The Public Works Department (PWD) is committed to providing a detailed bill of quantity (BQ), a document used in tendering for a particular project, to ensure transparency in its procurement system.

Works Minister Baru Bian said bidders were required to put their bids based on these BQs, followed by providing an estimated value of the project to assist those involved in evaluating the bids.

“To secure a competent potential bidder at a competitive price, a twotier tender process is conducted. The first tier is to screen and select those potential bidders and the second tier is to allow the selected potentials to submit their proposal based on the BQ.

“Then comes the evaluation stated in the tender documents. This is based on the price, the period of project completion, financial capabilities, current workload, working experience and technical capabilities of contractors,” he said while delivering his keynote speech at the Policy Paper on Public Procurement launching ceremony here yesterday.

He cited Promise 23 in the Pakatan Harapan manifesto, which states that the government will ensure every sen of the taxpayers’ money is well spent by reforming the public procurement system and the way contracts are awarded.

“This is to ensure that it (the procurement system) is more competitive and would generate the best value for taxpayers money, making sure that open tendering is done transparently and extensively especially for large projects,” he said.

Bian, who is also Sarawak PKR chief, assured that public funds would be well spent on major projects.

“For the projects under my ministry, we are focusing on projects that support road user safety such as replacement of existing bridges prone to road accidents, roads connecting to ports and airports, projects which have an impact on economic activity and projects using new technology and innovation,” he explained.