The Gauteng Provincial Treasury and the Department of Roads and Transport on Wednesday revealed the names of the 12 bidders for the Cedar road upgrade tender, which formed part of the province’s open tender pilot project.

The open tender project was aimed at improving transparency, as well as compliance with the supply chain management provisions of the Public Finance Management Act.

Officials from the Provincial Treasury and the Department of Roads and Transport publically opened the tender box in the presence of bidders at a high-tech facility with close-circuit television cameras.

The bids were registered, imprinted and the tender amounts, which ranged from R80-million to R100-million, were announced.

“This is the first time that we open and adjudicate tenders in this manner and lessons learned will be used to improve the process and ensure greater public scrutiny of the tendering process,” Finance MEC Barbara Creecy and Roads and Transport MEC Ismail Vadi said in a joint statement.

The bidders for the tender included Sedtrade, Lubbe Construction, Lonerock Construction, Gorogang Plant Hire, Power Construction, Fountain Civil Engineering, Mivami Construction, King Civil/Ludonga joint venture (JV), Lebaka JV, Tshenolo Resources, Down Touch Investments and Phagama Civil & Maintenance.

The names of the bidders, as well as an update on the tender process, would be published on the Provincial Treasury’s website on Wednesday.

The Provincial Treasury’s bid evaluation committee would, in the first week of February, screen the bids for document compliance, capacity and experience to deliver on the project. By law, any contract worth more than R30-million required contractors to have a Construction Industry Development Board 8CE or above for their bids to be considered.

After the screening, a shortlist would be created and verified by the independent probity audit team.

The bid adjudication committee, which would sit in the first week of March, would examine the bid evaluation committee process and consider the shortlisted bids. The adjudication committee’s deliberations, which would determine the successful bidder, would be open to the public.

Lessons learnt during the pilot would be used to revise the open tender policy, which would be taken to the Gauteng Executive Council for adoption and used across all provincial departments.