EuropeAid/133510/D/SUP/GH
RE-LAUNCH OF TENDER FOR THE SUPPLY OF LABORATORY AND METROLOGY EQUIPMENT FOR TESTING AND CALIBRATION LABORATORIES IN GHANA
Clarifications
DOCUMENT / ITEM / QUESTION / ANSWERGeneral
Is there a need for a “manufacturers authorisation” / There is no need to supply a manufacturer’s authorisation. It is assumed that when you make a technical and financial offer, you have arrangements with suppliers, for example through dealership agreement, specific contract, or an offer from a supplier or manufacturer, which legally entitle you to make the offer.
Do you need brochures for all lots? / It is not mandatory to supply a brochure for each item of equipment in each Lot. However, it is highly recommended to provide technical brochures and data sheets whenever relevant as they can be indispensable tools in clarifying the exact nature and specifications of the equipment you are offering.
We like to draw your attention to the first page of the document C4f – Technical Specifications and Technical Offer (Annex II and Annex III).
Your technical offer and the technical specifications should be detailed enough to make a good comparison with the requested technical specifications. Merely repeating and copying the requested technical specification as the technical specification of the equipment you are offering without any further details and/or additional documentation, is generally not considered sufficient to identify the equipment offered.
You have stated that, many of the tenderers made administrative errors, which culminated into the cancellation of those lots. Can you please clarify some of the errors so that those of us coming for the first time would not make same mistakes? / Some of the serious mistakes made include:
· The company does not comply with the three selection criteria stated in Article 16 of the Contract Notice. The company has to fulfil all the requirements concerning economic and financial capacity, professional capacity, and technical capacity.
· Violations of the rules of origin, meaning that goods are offered that come from manufacturers in countries that are not eligible for this specific tender. If one item in a lot has the wrong country of origin, the whole lot will be rejected.
· Offering equipment that does not fulfil all the technical specifications. If one item in a lot has wrong technical specifications, the whole lot will be rejected.
· Not providing all the documents that are required. See Article 11 of the Instructions to Tenderers on the content of the tender, as well as additional instructions in some of the required documents.
Contract
Notice
Article 8
ITT Art. 4
Spec. Cond.
Art. 10 / Rules of origin
In contract notice at page 2 it is accorded the following exception to the rule of origin: Lot 9/No. 314. Anyway Lot 9 does not contain item No. 314 that is instead present in Lot 20. Please confirm that derogation to the rule of origin is possible for item Lot 20/No. 314. / Item 314 belongs indeed to Lot 20.
The correct list of items and lots for which a derogation from the rules of origin is granted in the tender documents is, therefore, as follows:
1. Lot 6 / No.307 (Set of accessories for existing universal length machine)
2. Lot 7 / No.082 (Precision environmental monitor T/RH)
3. Lot 9 / No.334 (Rubidium clock with GPS comparison system)
4. Lot 20 / No.314 (Voltage reference scanner + DC nanovolt/micro-Ohm meter)
5. Lot 20 / No.317 (Air thermostat for standard resistors)
6. Lot 20 / No.318 (Resistance Bridge 1 mΩ to 100 MΩ, with Matrix Scanner)
7. Lot 20 / No.329 (Precision LCR meter with calibration set)
8. Lot 20 / No.333 (Precision load cell simulator)
9. Lot 20 / No.387 (Precision LCR meter)
10. Lot 21/ No.369 (3-phase isolation transformers for MTE Electricity Meter Test Bench)
The above list is applicable to the Contract Notice (Article 8), the Instructions to Tenderers (Article 4), and the Draft Contract Special Conditions (Article 10).
Is Turkey (being a candidate country for entrance towards European Community) being an eligible country from origin point of view? Please clarify. / Eligibility is determined on the basis of “Annex IV of the Partnership Agreement ACP-EU signed in Cotonou on 23 June 2000 as last revised in Ouagadougou, on 22 June 2010”
In summary, participation is open to natural and legal persons who are established in:
· One of the 29 Member States of the European Union
· An officially recognised EU candidate country (The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey, Iceland, Montenegro)
· A Member State of the European Economic Area (Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway)
· An ACP country (Angola - Antigua and Barbuda - Belize - Cape Verde - Comoros - Bahamas - Barbados - Benin - Botswana - Burkina Faso - Burundi - Cameroon -– Central African Republic - Chad - Congo (Brazzaville) - Congo - Cook Islands – Côte d'Ivoire – Cuba - Djibouti - Dominica - Dominican Republic - Eritrea - Ethiopia - Fiji - Gabon - Gambia - Ghana - Grenada - Republic of Guinea - Guinea-Bissau - Equatorial Guinea - Guyana - Haiti - Jamaica - Kenya - Kiribati - Lesotho - Liberia - Madagascar - Malawi - Mali - Marshall Islands - Mauritania - Mauritius - Micronesia (Federated States of) - Mozambique - Namibia - Nauru - Niger - Nigeria - Niue - Palau - Papua New Guinea - Rwanda - St. Kitts and Nevis - St. Lucia - St. Vincent and the Grenadines - Solomon Islands - Samoa - Sao Tome and Principe - Senegal - Seychelles - Sierra Leone - Somalia - South Africa - Sudan - Suriname - Swaziland - Tanzania - Timor Leste - Togo - Tonga - Trinidad and Tobago - Tuvalu - Uganda - Vanuatu - Zambia – Zimbabwe)
· A least developed country according to the UN (Afghanistan, Angola, Bangladesh, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Central African Rep., Chad, Comoros, Congo Dem. Rep., Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Kiribati, Laos, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Niger, Rwanda, Samoa, Sao Tome & Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sudan, South-Sudan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Yemen, Zambia)
It is emphasised that Ghana is classified as a middle income country, and therefore, it does not belong to the UN group of ‘least developed countries'. Consequently, the rules for automatic reciprocal access granted to OECD/DAC members for least developed countries is not applicable; hence the non-EU countries within the OECD/DAC group, in particular: Australia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Switzerland, United States, are non-eligible countries for this contract.
Please kindly list which country outside Europe are acceptable for this project, for EDF program. / See answer above
Article 11
ITT Art. 22 / Tender guarantee
In case of tendering for more than one Lot, is it possible to open a single guarantee as a result of the sum of the guarantees of each lot? / Article 7.2 of the Instructions to Tenderers states that each lot is a separate contract. Furthermore, Article 22 of the Instructions to Tenderers states that ‘Tender guarantees provided by tenderers who have not been selected shall be returned …The tender guarantee of the successful tenderer shall be released on the signing of the contract, once the performance guarantee has been submitted”.
Providing a combined unique tender guarantee for all lots on which you intend to bid is therefore not acceptable; moreover, it could lead to practical problems if you would be the winner of only one or more, but not all of the lots that you tendered for.
Please kindly confirm if it is acceptable if we provide a unique tender guarantee for the total of tender guarantee amount for all lots we intend to bid. / See answer above
Article 16.3 / Selection criteria
Contract notice - Selection Criteria 16.3 (Professional capacity of tenderer):
For each of the lots 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15, 18, 19, 20 and/or 21 the tenderer is required to currently employ a minimum of 3 permanent staff specialised in fields related to the lot for which the tenderer is bidding.
Does it mean that if a tenderer is applying for 2 different lots he has to have 6 permanent staff or could staff be the same for more than one lot?
For example for Lots 9 and 20 electrical measurements I and II, a tenderer could consider the same staff to be specialized in the field. Is so possible to cover both lots with 3 permanent staff only? The same for Lots 8 and 18 (items for measurement of pressure).
In other words, could a tenderer with 5 permanent staff apply for 2 different lots or should we choose only one of them? / The criterion for professional capacity does requires that the tenderer has for each lot 3 members of staff that can be considered as specialists in that particular field. The aim of the criterion is to ascertain that the tenderer has the capacity to understand the technical specifications, and to provide the beneficiary with the necessary technical support if so required. However, the requirement does not exclude that a person can be a specialist in more than one field, especially if they are closely related. Therefore, it is possible that a company with a small number of specialists can cover more than one lot, as long as their expertise is adequate for all equipment in those lots.
It is the responsibility of the tenderer to appraise the expertise of its staff in relation to the subject matter of the different lots when making a technical offer. Non-compliance with any of the selection criteria will lead to the exclusion of the tenderer.
Instructions to tenderers
Article 2
Article 10.3 / Timetable
Submission of tenders
Could you allow the submission of tender documents at the same day as the opening of the tender, i.e. Monday 2nd of December 2013 09.00h? In this way Bidders who want to present their Bid can stay and attend the Bid opening on the same day like we see in other EU Tenders as well. Perhaps the deadline for tender submission could also be Monday 2nd of December at 10.00 or 12.00h and the opening of Bid at the same days at 14.00h. Please advise if this is possible. / See the corrigendum No.2 published on the EuropeAid website, in which the deadline for submission of tenders and the tender opening session have been changed.
Article 11 / Content of Tenders
Electronic version: do we have to include only on CD or one CD for each copy / For each Lot for which you submit a tender, you should include and electronic version of the Financial Offer. One CD or one flash drive per Lot is sufficient. You are requested to provide one official version in a PDF format and one work version in an Excel format.
Article 14 / Clarification meeting / site visit
Would you organize a pre-bid conference to walk us through what you expect from the tenderers? / No. It is stated in Article 14 of the Instructions to Tenderers (Document C4b) that there will be no clarification meeting.
Draft Contract: Special Conditions
Article 19
and ITT
Article 1.1 / Period of implementation of the tasks
Within the period of implementation do we have to consider also customs clearance times? If yes, which is the responsibility of the supplier concerning local bureaucracy and possible delays? If clearance times are included, should we ask for a suspension certificate or is this automatically accorded by the Contracting Authority? / It is mandatory that the delivery, installation and training must be completed at the place of delivery for each instrument, within the time period stated in the tender documents. This period includes the time for custom clearance.
Please, refer also to Article 20 of the General Conditions.
Please note that the implementation period for the complete project is 120 days except for the items 301 and 318. We would like to ask extension for the implementation period for the following lots:
· Lot 2 we require 240 days. In this Lot is an ICP-MS provided and that instrument requires an export license. Please note this takes approximate 180 days to get this license.
· Lot 4 and 15 we require 180 days.
· For Lot 6 we require at least 220 to 240 days. The standard delivery time for the gauge blocks and calibration equipment is 120 to 180 days. You can consult yourself the reputable manufacturers for verification.
· For Lots 8 and 18 we would require at least 180 days according to manufacturers’ info, due to the nature of the products as these are not standard “stock-items”
· For Lot 19 we have been told that the production time is approx. 7-10 months (this counts for all manufacturers) so a delivery-time of 120 days in the tender does not seem to reflect the correct delivery time due to the nature and complicity of the products involved. Besides production these instrument should also be carefully calibrated (and this process take many months). Please extend the implementation time for this Lot at least to a 12 months delivery-time. / See the corrigendum No.2 published on the EuropeAid website, in which the period for the delivery, installation, and training for certain items of equipment has been changed.
Please communicate if it is possible to extend the implementation period to 180 days for all items of all lots, due to the complexity and the large no. of items, for each lot. / See answer above
26.5 / Payment terms
Please kindly confirm that if the pre-financing requested is equal or below EUR 300 000 no pre-financing guarantee is required, in accordance with the derogation indicated in the Special conditions. / By derogation to article 26.5 of the General conditions, a pre-financing guarantee may not be required if the requested pre-financing is below the threshold of € 300.000 but can be requested in case of lack of sufficient documentary proof that it complies with the selection criteria or based on a risk assessment by the contracting authority.