Firm wins army tender denied it over ‘bias’

Pretoria - A judge in the High Court here has questioned the fact that the tender board of the SANDF refused point blank to accept the preferred bid for its national codification system – which was R229 million cheaper than the bidder’s competitor.

The SANDF’s central procurement board several times refused to accept the recommendation that the IT company CFIT Ltd be awarded the tender.

This was despite the SANDF’s procurement services centre clearly recommending this company.

The board is ultimately responsible for awarding tender contracts on the recommendation of the procurement services centre.

The IT company’s only competitor, Specsoft Software Solutions Ltd, tendered R348m for the five-year contract, compared with CFIT’s price of R119m. The court also heard that CFIT (the applicant) scored far higher marks in the tender bid than its competitor.

The board persisted in its refusal to award the tender to the applicant. It kept on referring the matter back for reconsideration. Eventually the board decided to rather cancel the tender – a step Judge Bill Prinsloo deemed irregular.

The applicant headed to court, asking for an order setting aside the SANDF’s decision to withdraw the tender.

The company asked the judge not to refer the matter back for reconsideration to the SANDF, but to order that the tender be directly be awarded to it.

In May last year, the defence minister issued a request for proposals on the provision of a codification system for the Defence Department. This was for five years and nothing new, the judge said, as the existing codification system had already been implemented in 1982.

There were four bidders, but only the applicant and Specsoft passed phase one of the process.

Apart from being about three times cheaper than its competitor, the applicant scored 98 points in its presentation as opposed to the 35 points scored by Specsoft.

But three times the board referred the matter back to the procurement services centre for reconsideration.

Each time it unanimously recommended the applicant for the job. It said not only was it by far the cheapest bidder, but it had international experience and expertise.

The board eventually cancelled the bid, without informing the applicant, and called for new bids. This process was put on ice, pending the outcome of this application.

Judge Prinsloo said the reasons the board gave for referring the matter back for reconsideration had no merit. One of the objections concerned a minor calculation error.

The judge said the applicant gave a well-informed demonstration to the SANDF on how the codification system worked and there were no questions regarding the system.

The board later complained about the long-term feasibility of the system and said the applicant’s bid may be cheaper, but it did not make allowance for a period after the initial five years.

It was said that the department would then after five years again have to enter into a deal for the maintenance of the system.

Judge Prinsloo said these excuses were groundless.

“There are clear signs of bias on the part of the board. Its conduct was unfair and irrational.”

The judge concluded that the court should directly order the applicant be awarded the tender.

Pretoria News