New norms for bidding of Highway Projects

INVC,,

New Delhi,,

With a view to resolve the procedural impediments, National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) has modified some of the norms in model documents for Build-Operate-Transfer-(BOT) projects i.e. Request for Qualification and Request for Proposal (RFQ/RFP). This has been done consequent to acceptance of the recommendations of the Chaturvedi Committee’s first report by the government.

Further, in accordance with the provisions under clause 2.1.18 of Model Request for Proposal (RFP), NHAI has laid down some norms recently in the bidding documents with a view to expedite implementation of the National Highways Development Programme (NHDP). As per the new norms, a bidder shall not be eligible for bidding if, as on the bid date, the Bidder, it’s Member or Associate was, either by itself or as member of consortium has been declared by the Authority as the Selected Bidder of undertaking three or more projects and the bidder is yet to achieve financial closure. A bidder shall be considered as declared Selected Bidder for the projects of NHAI, where the Letter of award (LOA) has been issued (Clause 2.1.18 (i)).

It has also been made mandatory, as per Clause 2.1.18 (ii), that the Concessionaire shall engage only such EPC Contractors for execution of the work that have experience of at least one single completed highway work of value at least 20% of the Estimated Project Cost in the preceding 5 years. An undertaking to this effect shall be provided by the Concessionaire along with the EPC Project Agreement Document.

These norms will impact those developers, who have outstanding LOAs but have not yet achieved the financial closure while seeking participation in the bidding process for further projects. For the purpose of determining the eligibility of developers to bid, all projects pending for financial closures are taken into account and not merely those which are overdue. The amendments in the model RFP have been introduced by the NHAI with the view to expedite financial closure by the developers.

This information was provided by Shri Kamal Nath, Minister for Road Transport and Highways