Tendering Process from CTRAN’s Perspective

Tendering is a systematic process followed in the Municipal Corporation. Multiple interactions with different levels of Officials made me understand how exactly this process works.

The OPWD Code is like the bible for the Engineering section in the Municipal Corporation, but the way the officials apply the knowledge is amazing. Not only are they aware of the rules jotted down but also have all the points that are deviating from the standard practices at their fingertips. Using their knowledge and ours to formulate a programme was one-of-its-kind.

So how did it start? The exercise began by submitting the layout drawings by the team to the engineering section of Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation. The City Engineer, the head of the Engineering division, allocated engineers looking after different wards to take their list and the layout plan to physically verify the plan. Though I just jotted this down in two sentences, the work actually took about a week’s time.

Gathering all the engineers at once place is a herculean job, as they are usually busy at sites and there is a bare minimum chance that two engineers are free at the same time. Finally, after great toil and a week of constant follow up, the plan was fixed for the site visit of different engineers along with the Project Sammaan members.

Once the feedback was received, the final step was to give approval for preparing the Bill of Quantities (BoQs). Then the exercise of preparing the estimates and BOQs started and we worked to ensure the Government was kept in loop about the progress from time to time. Their suggestions regarding the tendering process were invaluable: it stretched from providing documents like latest Odisha schedule of rates, to strategy on how to move forward.

And then the major part: the technical and administrative sanction, a major milestone that marked the tremendous effort put by the team in the past some months. Once all the documents were checked by different layers (Junior Engineer, Asst. Engineer, Executive Engineer, and finally the City Engineer), it paved its path through the technical section and is now on the journey of administrative section.

Interaction with the Government while the background work was going on was a challenging job. It was imperative that the Officials be kept informed that quality work is going on while asking information on other aspects of the project. However, the inputs and suggestions from the officials was very helpful. Their years of experience provided invaluable inputs which helped to manoeuvre the project in the right direction.