Contractors tender bids for Bt350b water management plans in Thailand

BANGKOK, May 3 (TNA) – Thailand's Water Management and Flood Prevention Commission (WMFPC) has begun receiving bids and technical proposals from qualified contenders who are vying for the government's new mega water management projects, worth altogether 350 billion baht. The official acceptance of the documents started on Friday morning at Bangkok's Government House, with the consortium of Italian-Thai Development Public Company Limited and Power China being the first group of contenders showing up to bid for nine project modules, with its documents even delivered on a six-wheeled truck. Other contenders included the Summit SUT Joint Venture and K-water Co of South Korea. WMFPC Secretary-General Supoj Tovichakchaikul told reporters that the documents would be sealed and stored in the Red Building in the compound of the government seat and 25 copies of them would be kept in an old gymnasium close to the Red Building. Supoj said that 50 members of the bid evaluation committee can withdraw the copies for examinations, but they are prohibited from bringing the documents out of the compound of the Government House to ensure transparency. The WMFPC secretary-general acknowledged that the 50-member evaluation panel will first score technical proposals and then select contenders with the highest technical scores for price negotiations, and that selected bidders need to score over 80 per cent for technical proposals, with the results of the bidding contest to be publicly announced on June 4, 2013. According to the WMFPC secretary-general, the Bangkok-based Administrative Court has rejected a request, earlier filed by a group of individuals, for his panel to halt the bidding contest process for the new mega-projects, reasoning that it is only the stage of document delivery and there has not yet been any legal activity. (TNA)