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The Tender Exercise - Part I

Salam,

The Tender Exercise - Part I

The Tender Document and Drawings

An intern at our firm asked me about what is the Tender Exercise. So, for the benefit of young engineers and engineering students who would like to enter the realm of the construction industry someday, it's an exercise that involves the following, but first..

The context of 'Tender' here is not 'Tender Loving Care' or TLC or to 'Tender Resignation'.

'Tender' is basically 'Bid'. You may read in.. Google..., especially about the thing called 'Invitation to Treat'. Essentially it's a process of obtaining offers from bidders (or tenderers) who are construction companies or specialized trades, such as air-cond, fire protection, plumbing, gas, electrical, ELV (extra low voltage), lift & escalators, medical gas, pneumatic tube (used at hospitals and toll plazas-before touch & go became the only way to pay), landscape, ID, building management unit or BMU (google 'gondola'), BMS (building management systems) and all sorts of specialized trades other than the building works (which are carried out by a construction company).

Generally, (however, I'm basing this post on M&E Tenders, something I'm familiar with) it involves preparing the tender document which consists of...

  1. Drawings - so that the bidders (we use the term 'tenderers' biasanya) may quote the price of the system (we call it 'works') from.
  2. Tender Document which is going to be 'binding' - as in contractual - which consist of :-

(a) General conditions, such as Notice to Tenderers, Instruction to Tenderers, Form of Tender, a sample of the either the Form of Contract or the Form of Nominated Sub-Contract (PAM 2006 or PAM 2018 or JKR 203 or JKR 203N - semua2 tu you can PM me or other practicing engineers here to know what's that all about), Conditions of Contract (or CoC) and Supplementary Conditions of Contract.

b) Tender Specifications - where the specifications of the works or systems is spelled out. Specifications are binding, so basically if the tenderer who later becomes the contractor or sub-contractor for the project - should breach the specifications - for example - specs calls for say, water-cooled chillers but instead, the sub-con send to site air-cooled chillers (never happened but just an example, ya) to the site, that's a breach of Specifications and therefore a breach of Contract or sub-contract (I know some of you may ask, what's the difference between Contract and Sub-contract? PM tepi or email me for answer but janganlah tanya soalan2 cepumas ok?)

c) The Tender Schedules - consists of the the following :-

i) Schedule of Prices – divided into two - Summary of Tender Prices and Breakdown of Tender Prices (BoTP) - In this schedule, the tenderers fill up their price offers. They fill up the BoTP and then carry the sums of the various sections in the BoTP over to the Summary of Tender Prices. Then the total sum in the Summary of Prices is carried over to the Form of Tender. The Tender Price - is binding once it becomes a Contract or a Sub-Contract.

ii) Schedule of Unit Rates - The unit rates of the equipment or devices in the system or works is filled up here by the tenderer, such as price of a certain pipes per meter run (plus installation, etc), price of certain cables per meter run (either in conduit, trunking or cable tray), or a smoke damper, per square meter of area - just to name a few examples. The Unit Rates are oftenly used when the contractor or sub-con is claiming for additional works (popularly known as "Variation Orders" or VOs).

iii) Schedule of Technical Data - I've posted this before but we can go through it in the discussions later.

iv) The other schedules such as - there're many here, such as schedule of deviation from tender, tenderer's organization chart, schedule of maintenance charges (very important especially for lifts), schedule of sub-letting, schedule of spares provided, schedule of maintenance tools, schedule of contractor's experience and other schedules the consulting firm normally puts in. These schedules normally are not binding but it gives the idea of how 'good' the tenderer is.

This is IMPORTANT - add in the schedule of day-work rates, if it's not there. If it is, that'll save you some trouble later. 

last but not least - the List of Tender Drawings.

That's the end of Part I. In Part 2, I'll try to post something about the calling of Tenders process - Open, Invited, Pre-Qualification and the 'dreadful' "Direct Negotiation". If there're engineers here who would like to help to post on the subject, thank you in advance. Part 3 would be on the tender assessment, which I've covered a bit in one of my posts here...

Part 4 on Tender Interview - where the shortlisted tenderers are called for a clarification interview by the Client with the presence of the Consultants to clarify the tenderers' bid - should there be anything that requires clarification, and for the tenderer to clarify on certain items in the tender from the Client or Consultant (but the tenderer cannot change his Tender Price at that point).

Allah SWT knows best.

May we all be guided by Allah SWT, insha Allah. Amin.

Peace,

Wassalam, 

FbI

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