Issue - meetings

Dr Peter Brown of Helensburgh Community Council asked the following question:-

Would the Councillors care to comment on why they are only noting the report on the Waterfront Development despite this announcing a seven month delay to the project caused by the council’s tendering process.  Figures in the report say that a year’s delay would increase the project cost by 1.5%.  The seven month delay therefore requires the Council to find an additional £170,000 to address inflationary costs – this further reduces the opportunities to provide the slide and other leisure facilities that the community clearly desires.  Instead it is just paying for what is described as a “technical breach” in the tendering process.  In real-world terms, that means a mistake has been made, otherwise the council would not have needed to re-tender.  I would therefore ask the Councillors two questions:

• Concerning the mistake that will eventually cost tax-payers £170,000, has an investigation been conducted to pinpoint the costly shortfall of Council competence in issuing a flawed Bid for Tender?
• How are they ensuring that another mistake will not be made in the current tendering process, which would mean our ageing swimming pool would have to last even longer?

Councillor Gary Mulvaney, Policy Lead for Strategic Finance and Capital Regeneration Programme advised that the report was for noting because there was no decision to be made by the Area Committee.  The Invitation to Tender documentation package, which was issued by Argyll and Bute Council, was fully compliant with the Public Contracts (Scotland) Regulations.

He advised that he did not agree that it was a flawed bid and as noted in the report, the issue was with respect to communications received by the Council in connection with the procurement exercise.

Our procurement processes must comply with the Key Principles, set out in the Regulations:

1.         Equal treatment and non-discrimination – everyone must be treated equally and given an equal chance of winning a contract;

2.         Transparency – contracting authorities must ensure that their procurement and contracting processes are clear and transparent.

3.         Proportionality – tender requirements must be set in accordance with the needs of the contract in question

As soon as the potential issue was identified immediate steps were taken to assess the potential impact against the Key Principles that we have just mentioned. 

Following specialist procurement advice from our officers and external legal advisors, and to ensure that there was no question as to the Equality of Treatment of all bidders, the decision was taken to abandon the procurement exercise.

In going back out to tender we have strengthened the wording in our various Instructions to bidders to ensure that there is no dubiety as to the appropriate communication channels between them and us.  We have also reviewed and strengthened written guidance to our project team to ensure all guidance is strong and robust to mitigate any chance of this happening in the re-tender process.