18/11/2021
What suppliers/contractors need to know about Pre-qualifying for Tender Opportunities.
Pre-qualification helps clients secure an effective degree of competition by identifying the contractors whose skills and experience most closely match the requirements of the work. It is a way of narrowing down the field to arrive at a select group of contractors, chosen on the basis of their ability to satisfy a defined set of criteria. It means that ostensibly every contractor starts with the same degree of opportunity and no one reaches the stage of submitting a tender without getting through the preliminary rounds.
Both the government of Uganda and private entities have a process that offers an objective and auditable basis on which to determine the professional, technical and financial status of potential bidders; it also makes competitive tendering a more manageable procedure for clients and a more focused one for contractors, since only those who can substantiate their place on a shortlist need commit resources to the development of a tender.
In both the public and the private sectors it is common for clients to maintain registers or lists of approved suppliers or preferred contractors. Entry to these registers is generally obtained through the completion of forms and questionnaires covering skills, experience, financial standing and related matters, as well as quality management and 'business excellence' issues.
The process of formal pre-qualification related to individual contract opportunities is normally applied to both public sector authorities by law and private entities by choice or need and is associated with contracts that have values at or above the thresholds defined in public procurement legislation. Though procurement legislation has laid down the ground rules for pre-qualification, methods and approaches vary across the public sector: individual authorities, government departments, utility companies and GoU-funded programmes may each define the form in which they apply the process without omitting key ingredients as prescribed by the laws of Uganda and the funding Organisations.
The PPDA Act and regulations do not preclude contracting authorities from discussing forthcoming opportunities with potential bidders even before a contract notice appears and encouraging them to express interest, provided there is no element of discrimination in these contacts. As a general principle, the starting point is the tender notice, which will advise prospective contractors about pre-qualification procedures and the information required from them in this initial stage. Contractors may be asked to complete a pre-qualification application form, which may accompany an Internet announcement of the contract, or to submit an expression of interest, which may consist in part of forms covering both administrative data and technical information.
The law compels government entities by and large to use standardized forms so as to obtain a consistent basis for the comparison and assessment of information. Where expressions of interest are requested, the structure and content of the document will normally be defined by the client as per the standard schedules, who may also set a limit on its length - eg '10 pages of A4 with a minimum font size of 11 pt'. The criteria applied in pre-qualifying contractors generally relate to their personal or corporate repute, technical capacity and ability and financial status.
