Appeal on Mcast tenders rejected

The Public Contracts Appeals Board has turned down a complaint filed by a company which cried foul over the tender for IT courses at the Malta College for Arts, Science and Technology, finding that the adjudicating board had not acted in bad faith.

However, in its decision, the appeals board heavily criticised the adjudication board for the "amateurish traits (in its) modus operandi".

It pointed out that the adjudication board members had failed to analyse all the tender document provisions before assessing the offers.

Significantly, it also emerged that the adjudication board did not even know that the minimum mark for a company to be eligible for a contract was 70, not 50, a crucial point, since the company appealing the decision, Computer Domain Ltd, insists it should have been the only company to be awarded the contract being the only one to exceed the 70 point threshold set in the tender requirements.

Instead, the board prepared a second report in which points were increased and, as a result, all companies that submitted a bid became eligible for contracts.

Computer Domain's lawyer Edward Gatt argued that the practice was "irregular" and that all the other bidders should have been disqualified immediately once they had not reached the minimum threshold.

During the appeal hearings, Juan Borg Manduca, the chairman of the adjudication board, admitted that the first set of marks was increased after he had noticed that the pass mark was 70. He said this was "a genuine mistake" and that these marks were increased pro rata.

The appeals board said it had noted the failure of all the adjudication board members to analyse all the tender document provisions before proceeding with the assessment of offers.

"This (appeals) board cannot but exclaim its amazement in this regard, questioning, in the process, how the adjudication board could have worked on the assumption that the pass mark was set at 50 per cent of the total score when the tender document had fixed a threshold of 70 per cent.

"The PCAB (Public Contracts Appeals Board) cannot condone such unprofessional conduct no matter what excuses are brought about. The board cannot but argue that had all the adjudication board members properly carried out the work they were entrusted with carrying out in the first place this objection would, in all probability, not have been raised," the appeals board said in its decision.

The board also expressed concern that the original report was superseded by another without either a hard or, at least, a soft copy of the original report being retained.

Notwithstanding these flaws, however, the board said Computer Domain Ltd had failed to prove that the adjudication board had acted in bad faith and therefore rejected the appeal.

The company has now filed a judicial protest claiming that Mr Borg Manduca, as chairman of the selection committee, had lied under oath during the appeals hearing when he said that the blunder was "a genuine mistake".

Last week, the Education Ministry said a police investigation requested by Labour MP Evarist Bartolo had concluded that the Mcast selection board had not carried out any wrongdoing but found that there were instances of "carelessness". It also said that four individuals from two private ICT training providers which submitted offers for training will be charged with making false declarations to a public authority.