Annual technical evaluation for highway bidders likely by month-end

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is likely to finalise the annual pre-qualification ‘technical points' for highway bidders by this month-end.

A whopping 114 bidders have already queued up for this qualification.

Under the new process, each interested company or group of companies will be evaluated and awarded qualifying points annually.

The annual pre-qualification assessment process had been one of the long-standing demands of developers, some of whom have been at the receiving end, losing out opportunities to bid financially.

The new process is expected to save two-three months of the time taken in the overall bidding process. It is also likely to reduce disputes between the NHAI and the bidders with regard to allegations of disqualification on “frivolous grounds”.

In March, the NHAI had invited applications from firms seeking annual technical qualification.

Bidders Queue Up

Applicants seeking annual prequalification points include a mix of single firms, their subsidiaries, and companies in consortium.

Companies seeking points purely as standalone firms include IRB Infrastructures Ltd, IL&FS Transportation Ltd, L&T Infrastructure Development Projects Ltd, GMR Infrastructure Ltd and Reliance Infrastructure.

There are some who have sought points in their own a capacity and with consortium partners.

For instance, IVRCL has sought qualification points as IVRCL Ltd; IVRCL Assets and Holdings; and IVRCL Ltd-Hindustan Dorr Oliver Ltd.

Similarly KNR Constructions has sought annual pre-qualification points as a single entity and with its concession partner, Peninsula Land Ltd.

Interestingly, APR Constructions, Vijay Nirman Company Pvt Ltd and Totem Infrastructure have separately sought to be assessed with a Chinese company, Jiangsu Provincial Transportation Engineering Group Co, as their partner. Macquarie SBI Infrastructure Pte Ltd, Spanish company Isolux Corsan Concessions India Pvt Ltd and SREI Infrastructure Finance Ltd are some of the firms seeking annual pre-qualification points.

The Process

For each project now, the NHAI carries out due diligence at request for qualification level. So for each project, the bidders have to submit documents for technical qualifications based on which NHAI has to do the calculations and verification for selection.

“NHAI aims to come out with the technical points list by June-end,” a top NHAI official told Business Line .

Incidentally, the issue had also been flagged in May 2010, when the Central Bureau of Investigation had raided NHAI officials on the Nagpur-Betul project. The investing body had commented, “NHAI had received 13 offers for this project, of which four were rejected by the NHAI officials on frivolous grounds at qualification stage only.”

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