The tender lifecycle: from notice to award, in the portal's own stage names

The stages as NIC names them

The Central Public Procurement Portal (CPPP) and the state portals built on it run on one piece of software, the National Informatics Centre's GePNIC, and NIC's own brochure names the stages a tender passes through: “Registration, publishing of tender, bid submission, tender opening, technical evaluation, financial bid opening, financial evaluation, award of contract.”National Informatics Centre (NIC)

Each stage has an owner, and what a bidder can still change shrinks at every one.

Registration happens once rather than once per tender; it belongs to Before you can bid, and the portals themselves to The portals. Terms: GePNIC, CPPP.

Notice and schedule

A tender begins as a Notice Inviting Tender. In the Model Tender Document for goods, the NIT is followed by a Tender Information Summary, and that summary says how the bid is packaged: “No. of Covers [Two Covers]”. The rest of the document is the tender schedule, and on CPPP it costs nothing to read: the portal “enables the Tenderers to download the Tender Schedule free of cost and then submit the bids online through this portal.” Where a tender does charge for its document, that sum and the three others a bid involves are set out in Money in a bid.

Publishing is a duty. GFR Rule 159(i) makes it “mandatory for all Ministries/ Departments of the Central Government, their attached and Subordinate Offices and Autonomous /Statutory Bodies to publish their tender enquiries, corrigenda thereon and details of bid awards on the GeM-Central Public Procurement Portal (GeM-CPPP).”

Reading the notice itself is How to read a Notice Inviting Tender. Terms: NIT, tender document.

Pre-bid conference

Not every tender has one. GFR Rule 173(x) provides for a pre-bid conference “in case of turn- key contract(s) or contract(s) of special nature for procurement of sophisticated and costly equipment or wherever felt necessary”. Attending is optional, with a consequence the model goods document spells out: “Participation in such a Pre-bid Conference is not mandatory. If a bidder does not participate or submit any query, then no subsequent representations from them regarding the Technical/ commercial specifications/ conditions shall be entertained.”Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance (hosted on CPPP)

The meeting changes nothing by itself. The 2019 Works Manual says the “techno-commercial requirements may be revised if considered necessary by way of issue of a formal corrigendum (mere minutes of the meeting of pre-bid conference would not suffice)”. What the buyer says in the room binds nobody until it is published as a corrigendum.

How long after issue the conference is held, and how long bidders must be given once the answers go out, are day-counts that live in How a tender changes after it is published. The term is pre-bid conference.

Corrigendum

A corrigendum is the buyer's amendment. The 2019 Works Manual (para 4.7): “At any time prior to the date of submission of bids, the Procuring Entity may, whether at his own initiative or in response to a clarification sought by a prospective bidder, amend bid documents by issuing a corrigendum.”Department of Expenditure, Ministry of FinanceThe same manual has the buyer extend the deadline where the change is significant.

Two rules decide what a corrigendum is worth to a bidder. First, it is published where the tender was: “The corrigenda and addenda shall be published in the same manner as the original Tender Document.” Second, it is part of the tender: “Any corrigendum or addendum thus issued shall be considered a part of the Tender Document”, and “the bidders' responsibility is to check the website(s) for any corrigenda/ addenda.” A bid built on the original document alone is a bid against a tender that no longer exists.

The time a corrigendum must leave before the deadline, and what a changed deadline does to a bid already uploaded, are in How a tender changes after it is published. The term is corrigendum.

Submission

Submission is the stage where the bidder acts and the portal keeps the record. Five things decide whether a bid exists at the deadline.

Covers. The tender declares how many covers a bid has and what each holds. The brochure calls this the “single/multiple cover bid system”, and the CPPP Bidders Manual Kit has a submission manual for single, two, three and four cover tenders. For a two-cover tender the Goods Manual says: “The first envelope, called the techno-commercial bid, contains the eligibility, technical quality and performance aspects, commercial terms and conditions and documents sought in the tender, except the price and relevant financial details.”Department of Expenditure, Ministry of FinanceTerms: cover, two-envelope.

Files and signature. NIC's guidelines name the permitted formats (“Generally, the permitted file format in the portal are pdf / xls / rar/ dwf/ jpg formats”) and the certificate that signs them, a “valid Digital Signature Certificate (Signing) of Class III issued by CA under CCA India”, procured “well in advance”. Nothing goes in on paper: “Offline documents will not be handled through this system.” The term is DSC, Class 3.

Fee and EMD, paid ahead. Where a tender fee or earnest money is payable online, the portal will not let a bid be finalised until the payment has reached it: “Only upon successful receipt of online payment, bidder can able to freeze / finally submit their bid to the procuring entity and get bid acknowledgment regarding successful bid submission.”NIC, Central Public Procurement PortalNIC's advice is to pay before the deadline; the margin it recommends is in Submitting on a NIC portal. Where a bid securing declaration stands in for bid security, the goods template puts it at Form 7; which tenders take one is EMD exemptions and the bid securing declaration.

Freeze. Uploading is not submitting. In the portal's words, “the bidder has to Click on the Freeze Bid Button, to ensure that he/she completes the Bid Submission Process. Bids Which are not Frozen are considered as Incomplete/Invalid bids”. The freeze is the act the deadline is measured against, and it is measured by the portal's clock: the end date and time run “as per Server System Clock”, in Indian Standard Time. The term is freeze bid.

Change of mind. Before the deadline a frozen bid is not final. “Bidders can resubmit the bid any number of times. Bidder can also withdraw the bid”, says the brochure, but withdrawal is one-way: “If a bidder withdraws their already submitted bid against a tender in the portal, then the bidder will not be allowed to participate in the same tender once again.”National Informatics Centre (NIC)Resubmit to correct; never withdraw to correct. The term is bid resubmission and withdrawal.

The idle logout and the screens themselves are Submitting on a NIC portal; enrolment and the certificate are Before you can bid.

Opening and evaluation

At the deadline the bidder's part ends and the buyer's begins. The portal opens the technical covers first, and the brochure lists a “live bid opening view for the bidders”. GFR Rule 163 is the rule behind the two-bid system, “simultaneous receipt of separate technical and financial bids”; the 2019 Works Manual gives the reason both covers go in together: “it would not be desirable to invite financial bids after opening of techno-commercial bids”.

Technical evaluation is a test against the tender's own criteria, and it is pass or fail. The model goods document says of its qualification section that “Bids/ bidders not meeting these Qualification criteria shall be rejected as nonresponsive.” A rejected bid's price is never seen: “In e-procurement, financial bids of technically non-compliant offers would remain encrypted and unopened.” Financial bid opening, on a date the buyer announces, is only for the bidders who passed.

Financial evaluation ranks the responsive bids, and the rules leave little room after that. GFR Rule 173(xiv): “Negotiation with bidders after bid opening must be severely discouraged.” The Goods Manual allows a price talk only “in exceptional circumstances”, and then “only with the lowest acceptable bidder (L1)”; “In no case, including where cartel rates are suspected, should negotiations be extended to those who had either not tendered originally or whose bid was rejected.”Department of Expenditure, Ministry of Finance

What gets a bid rejected at the technical stage is Why bids are rejected at technical evaluation; how the buyer chooses among the survivors is How the winner is chosen. Terms: tender opening, L1, post-tender negotiation.

Award and after

This is general information; confirm with the tender document and your adviser.

The last portal stage is the Award of Contract, “AOC” in the brochure's abbreviation, and under Rule 159(i) the details of the award go on CPPP as the notice did. Two sums move on award. The winner's performance security falls due “by a specified date”, named in the tender or the award letter. Bid security starts to come back: the winner's once the performance security has been received, under GFR Rule 171(iii), and the other bidders' after the award.

The percentages and the instruments a buyer accepts for performance security, and what a works contract goes on holding out of each running bill, are What is held back after you win. When each sum comes back, in days, is Money in a bid. Terms: award of contract, performance security, EMD.

Where the calendar lives

Every date on this page is the portal's date. The deadline is read off the server clock in Indian Standard Time; NIC's help page tells contractors to finish “well before the bid submission end date and time (as per Server System Clock)”. A tender's stage is public: NIC describes the Tender Status page as “the window to the outside world which informs the various stages of tenders at any given point of time.”

Two things date this page. The stage names are the portal's and have held since NIC's account of the system in 2011. The paragraph numbers belong to the editions named in each sentence, and a later edition may renumber them; the date at the top of this page is when they were last read against the documents.