What problems should be paid attention to in the bidding process? 0? three

What problems should be paid attention to in the bidding process? -Especially for some procurement personnel without specialized agencies or professionals, we should give full play to the advantages of professional procurement agencies and professionals to ensure the procurement personnel. In addition to introducing the government procurement laws and regulations, bidding process, commercial terms, contract format and time requirements to the purchaser, it is also necessary to cooperate with and assist the purchaser to complete a high-quality technical requirement. Good technical requirements are a good start to ensure the smooth completion of the bidding process and the smooth implementation of the project. The author thinks that the basic requirements for writing the technical requirements book are: 1, the overall planning of the project, the realization goal, the existing environment and the interface relationship with the original system and equipment. 2, the technical specifications and parameters of the main equipment (can't contain tendentious and discriminatory indicators and parameters, can't specify the brand and model). 3. Project after-sales service requirements (free warranty period, response time, etc.). 4, the intellectual property rights of the system, the right to use and ownership of the results should be clear. 5, system acceptance methods and standards also need to be determined in advance. Set a reasonable threshold to ensure fairness and justice: the most basic principles of government procurement are openness, fairness and justice. The first step to achieve fairness and justice is to require the tender documents to be fair and just. I think the most important thing is to pay attention to the following points: 1, set a reasonable threshold (entry qualification). For example, the total budget of the project is only 6.5438 million yuan, but the supplier is required to have the first-class certificate of computer information system integration qualification or its registered capital is required to reach more than 20 million yuan; Or ordinary projects, but the supplier must have the qualification of computer information system integration involving state secrets. These are unreasonable and unfair requirements for suppliers. 2. There should be no tendentious and discriminatory indicators, parameters and requirements in the technical requirements, and the technical parameters should be fair and just, in line with the general indicators of mainstream products. 3. Project splitting should be reasonable. For example, a large project of tens of millions of yuan can be divided into hardware (network, host, storage, etc. ) and software (system software, tool software, application software, etc. ) according to the professional characteristics, but the purchaser requires that they be tied together, so that only a limited number of suppliers can participate. In addition, although the project is not big, it is not suitable to be tied together because it contains more content and involves multiple majors. 4. Publish the budget as appropriate. There are two situations in which the budget should be announced. First, in the case that the project is complex and the demand is not particularly clear (because the functional grades and prices of IT products are quite different, the published budget can meet the needs of buyers within limited funds), and the most value-for-money system can be obtained at the same price; Second, in the case that some suppliers already know the project budget, for the sake of fairness, simply publish it. What needs special emphasis is that what is announced here is the project budget, not the pre-tender estimate. Technical parameters should be fair, and there should be no tendency to bid: Article 22 of the Government Procurement Law stipulates that "suppliers shall not be treated differently or discriminated against under unreasonable conditions" and Article 25 stipulates that "competition from other suppliers shall not be squeezed out by any means". However, in the process of bidding, we often encounter tendentious and discriminatory indicators or other exclusive situations put forward by buyers, which will not only affect the image of government procurement, but also affect the process of government procurement. I think tendentious tenders can be divided into two categories: one is that there are specific parameters, but the parameters are exclusive; Although the other category does not mention specific parameters and indicators, it can still be seen between the lines that it is biased towards some suppliers. The first category can be divided into two situations. First, the specific handling personnel of the purchaser do not understand the technical indicators of the purchased items, but according to the relevant regulations, the purchaser is required to provide technical parameters and indicators (specific brands and models cannot be mentioned) when purchasing by the government, so refer to the indicators of a certain model and copy them; In the second case, the purchaser has the specific model of the purchased goods and has even contacted the supplier (when applying for budget, the application is subject to the supplier's quotation). The first situation often appears in simple goods or goods with small unit price, and the parameters and indicators are not complicated, and the exclusiveness of indicators is small, so you can pay a little attention when making tenders. In the second case, the unit price is often high, the quantity is small, and its indicators are numerous and complicated. What is more troublesome is that the tendency of buyers is obvious. This kind of problem can be called brand and vehicle tendency problem. The second category, we call it supplier preference problem. Specifically, it can also be divided into two situations: one is the brand and model directly mentioned in the tender, but some models are rare or have been discontinued, but the supplier selected by the purchaser has these products in stock. In another case, the tender did not mention parameters and indicators, nor did it provide details and specific application data. Nominally, it is to give full play to the enthusiasm of bidders, but in fact, it excludes all bidders who are not familiar with the purchaser. This situation is the most difficult for us to deal with, and it also has the greatest negative impact, because we don't know the specific business details and application requirements of the buyer. In the tender, there are two kinds of tendentiousness problems, the last one is the most difficult to deal with, and it is also beyond our own power. This seemingly fair and essentially exclusive bid should be rejected. However, because the "Government Procurement Law" does not explicitly give the procurement agency the right to refuse, the operation is very difficult. To sum up, in order to avoid tendentiousness in bidding documents, we should strive to do the following: 1, strengthen the study of professional knowledge, and master the technical parameters and main indicators of related products. 2. Track the market situation of mainstream products and keep abreast of the latest trends. 3. Communicate with the purchaser before purchasing, publicize the government procurement law, and introduce the relevant principles and regulations of government procurement to the purchaser in order to obtain the cooperation and support of the purchaser. System integration is complex, and demand demonstration is very important: the characteristics of information system integration project are large scale, complex technology, involving a variety of knowledge and requiring the cooperation of multiple departments. Sometimes it is difficult for buyers to put forward a suitable demand. Let's look at two examples first. 1, a buyer's demand for an "emergency command system" with a budget of tens of millions of yuan is not very clear. He only knows the goal to be achieved, but it is difficult to put forward a perfect and clear bidding scheme (such as mainframe, storage, network and other equipment, how to match, what indicators to mention, so that the system can get the best effect and control the project budget), because of the project content. At this point, we thought of government procurement consulting experts. After repeated argumentation by experts, reasonable technical requirements are put forward and various indicators are set properly. Although a lot of time was spent before the bidding (the bidding time was late), from the bidding results, the preliminary work was very meaningful, not only the bid evaluation was smooth, but also the project implementation was very smooth, which completely achieved the expected results. After purchasing personnel, we fully recognized our operation mode (at first, we thought pre-certification was a waste of time). 2. When purchasing a "data warehouse system" project for a company, I found that the technical requirements of the purchaser were not very clear, or I discussed the detailed requirements with the company's technicians. However, because the data warehouse technology is relatively new and there are few successful cases, it is difficult to put forward a just right demand by our own strength, so I suggest inviting consulting experts to demonstrate the technical requirements before bidding. After consulting experts know the purpose and demand of buyers in detail, they think that data warehouse is a large-scale system engineering, and its application and development are very important. Simply buying off-the-shelf software can't completely solve practical problems. According to the current situation and development trend of this technology, experts suggest that buyers buy corresponding software according to the actual working state, and reduce the number of licenses purchased for development tools at the initial stage, and propose that one of the development platform software can meet the demand without purchasing, and realize the predetermined functions of the system. Afterwards, I learned that the platform software cost about 900,000 yuan, which means that this content alone saved 900,000 yuan, and the reliability and maintainability of the whole project were improved, which made the purchaser very satisfied. Therefore, for the system integration project with large objectives or the system with rapid technical development and great changes, it is suggested to conduct scheme demonstration and review before project procurement, so as to ensure the advanced, upgradeable and maintainable nature of the system, give full play to the role of government procurement consultants and the enthusiasm of professionals, and brainstorm ideas to better carry out government procurement work. Because the waste of decision-making is the biggest waste, the feasibility study of the project and the optimal design of the scheme are the primary tasks of government procurement, and the planning and design of the project should be done well with the concept of sustainable development. Some people may suggest that for specific managers engaged in government procurement, it is only the purchaser's business to purchase according to orders, scheme demonstration and design. I beg to differ. According to many years' actual purchasing experience, I think it is very important to refine and optimize the scheme before purchasing, at least for information system projects. The advantages of pre-demand demonstration are: it can make the bidding scheme more in line with the needs of users, and it can purchase a system that is worth more than its value, so as to really make good use of taxpayers' money and improve the efficiency of fund use. Bid evaluation is the core, and the organization of bid evaluation should be serious: bid evaluation is the core link of the whole bidding process and the last link of the bidding process. The quality of bid evaluation is the key to directly affect the quality and efficiency of procurement. As a centralized procurement organization, its importance is beyond doubt. For the procurement staff of centralized procurement institutions, to do a good job in bid evaluation, the author thinks that we should pay attention to the following three aspects: 1. Qualification examination is very important: Article 22 of the Government Procurement Law has a basic requirement for the qualifications of bidders. In addition to checking whether the bidder meets these basic requirements, we should also check some special requirements specified in the bidding documents for this project. First of all, it is necessary to check whether the bidder has all the access conditions stipulated in the tender documents (such as registered capital, comprehensive qualifications, secret-related qualifications, etc.). ). If the authenticity cannot be determined, it needs to be verified through other channels (such as through the website of the issuer); You can even ask the bidder to provide the original certificate. In the process of qualification examination, special attention should be paid to checking whether all parties in joint bid meet the requirements. Secondly, it is necessary to check whether the various documents and seals provided by the bidder conform to the specifications. The author has repeatedly encountered the situation that the bidder uses the department seal or other seals to impersonate the official seal of the company (seriously speaking, this is a forged seal, which is absolutely not allowed). 2. Tender work should be meticulous: there are generally many tender documents for integrated projects (for a project I tendered some time ago, five companies submitted tender documents, including one company's tender document 13, and the five companies' tender documents add up to more than one meter thick). Faced with a bid of hundreds of thousands of words, even hundreds of thousands of words, the bid evaluation committee is required to bid word for word within the specified limited time. At this time, the bidding work is particularly important. In addition to summarizing a comparison table of business requirements, it is also necessary to sort out a technical summary and reading guide table, and objectively extract technical points, page numbers and other information for the bid evaluation Committee to consult. What I want to emphasize here is that the summary must be objective and fair, and it will only be extracted and not evaluated, otherwise it will have an impact on the judges, which is not conducive to the independent, objective and fair evaluation of bidders by the judges. 3. Strict bid evaluation procedures and discipline: At the bid evaluation site, cases of non-compliance with bid evaluation procedures and violation of bid evaluation discipline sometimes occur. As an organizer, centralized procurement institutions should pay attention to maintaining the seriousness of bid evaluation. The human interference factors at the bid evaluation site mainly come from two aspects: first, the purchaser intentionally or unintentionally sends out tendentious opinions to induce the judges; Second, some judges did not carefully examine the bidding documents, or did not use their brains to ask what the purchaser's intentions were, and actively catered to the purchaser's opinions, which made the bid evaluation unfair. If this happens, we must stop it in time and remind the judges to pay attention to the discipline of bid evaluation. If there are serious violations, it should be raised to the government procurement supervision department in time and given to the judges for appropriate treatment. The evaluation criteria and methods specified in the tender documents are beyond the scope of this paper. Pay attention to the manufacturer's authorization, and don't be fooled: in government procurement, we usually require bidders to obtain the manufacturer's authorization certificate when using other people's products (that is, the manufacturer agrees to the bidder's use of its products and guarantees to provide corresponding services). There are two main purposes: on the one hand, it is to ensure the tenderer (buyer) to obtain formal and legal products and corresponding technical support and after-sales service; On the other hand, it is also to protect the rights and interests of manufacturers and prevent the proliferation of counterfeit goods and parallel imports. However, in the actual bidding and purchasing process, we often encounter many abnormal situations, that is, the good wishes of the tenderee are maliciously used by manufacturers (mainly some salespeople) to control bidders and monopolize prices, which harms the interests of the tenderee and undermines the good order of fair competition. Let's take a look at two real cases we encountered in the recent bidding activities. Case 1: During the bidding process of a disaster recovery backup system, three bidders used H company's products to bid, among which C company's bid price was the lowest. After the bid opening, Company H issued written statements in the names of branches, Asia-Pacific companies and head offices, claiming that the authorization of Company C only included "standard services attached to bare metal and hardware", excluding "after-sales technical services of manufacturers". Let's not discuss the difference between "standard services attached to bare metal and hardware" and "after-sales technical services of manufacturers". We can directly refer to the text of the power of attorney, and we can see that the obligations of the power of attorney to its manufacturers are described as follows: "As a manufacturer, we promise to bind ourselves together with the bidding partners and undertake the obligations related to our products in the bidding documents respectively". I would like to ask H Company, which just said that it should "restrain itself and undertake obligations", why does it not include "after-sales technical services of manufacturers" for the time being? More importantly, the power of attorney issued by company H to the three bidders participating in the bidding is completely consistent. Why does company C, which claims the lowest quotation, not include "after-sales technical service of manufacturers"? Then how can I trust Company A and Company B? Case 2: In the bidding process of a computer monitoring system, a database company clearly stipulated that in order to obtain its authorization, a cluster management software module must be bundled. The function of this module is not necessary for the system, but its price is 50% of the original required function of the system. In other words, to obtain the agency, the buyer must spend 50% more. Is it reasonable to force the tenderer to buy products that were not needed at that time (and the price is very high)? As can be seen from the above case, it is not a good practice to insist that the bidder obtain the authorization of the manufacturer in the bidding process. The author believes that the validity of bidding documents without manufacturer's power of attorney should be recognized when bidding for some products that cannot form full competition for various reasons. There are two main reasons: the most basic reason is that manufacturers often break their promises and show great disrespect to the tenderee for some reasons. As a tenderer, there is no need to think too much about its interests. More importantly, due to the cash on delivery policy adopted in government procurement in China, we can not only refuse to pay if there are fakes, parallel imports or pirated software, but also let the bidders bear the corresponding legal responsibilities, thus protecting the rights and interests of the tenderee. In other words, the original intention of asking the manufacturer to issue a power of attorney has been achieved. How to recruit follow-up projects and ensure compatibility is the key: in general, the implementation process of projects is often a planning and phased implementation. Theoretically speaking, this method is feasible and necessary: on the one hand, information technology develops rapidly, the product cycle is short, and it is eliminated quickly; On the other hand, the specific application is also gradual, gradually promoted and gradually improved, and needs to be implemented step by step according to the stage and demand. But as far as government procurement is concerned, from the second phase of the project, procurement difficulties will follow: because in the first phase of the project, the brand and model of hardware have been decided, and there are problems such as compatibility in subsequent procurement; System software and tool software have been fixed, that is, the system development platform and application environment have been fixed, and subsequent procurement can only be upgraded, and replacement is almost impossible; Developers and developers of application software have determined that the prototype of application software has been formed. It is impossible to recruit other developers unless they are reinvented. For the above reasons, how to carry out the government procurement of information system follow-up projects in strict accordance with the relevant provisions of the government procurement law is a problem faced by every government procurement practitioner engaged in this work. Since the brand and model of hardware have been decided in the first phase of the project, the follow-up procurement mainly faces the following three problems: First, there are more or less compatibility problems between different brands of hardware equipment; Second, users' technicians are familiar with the technical performance of existing products. If it is replaced by different brands of equipment in the subsequent procurement, it will bring certain difficulties to the maintenance and repair of equipment; Thirdly, the personal preference of technicians in user units for existing products also brings some difficulties to the fair procurement of subsequent equipment. Despite the above difficulties, the author insists that the procurement of hardware and equipment must strictly abide by the relevant provisions of the Government Procurement Law, and must not specify brands or technical indicators with any tendentiousness. The reasons are as follows: First, although there are more or less compatibility problems between different brands of hardware devices, due to the high degree of standardization in the information industry, mainstream products all follow the same standard or the same protocol, and their external interfaces are standard and universal, so there will be no problems for the main applications. Although sometimes there are some inconveniences in application, compared with the monopoly price caused by designated brands, the advantages definitely outweigh the disadvantages. Second, it is objective for the technicians of user units to be familiar with the technical performance of existing products. It is also true that switching to different brands of equipment in the subsequent procurement will bring certain difficulties to the maintenance and repair of equipment. However, compared with the high price and poor service caused by the long-term use of the same brand products, this difficulty can be overcome and should be overcome. About System Software and Tool Software The system software and tool software in the information system is the application environment (or application platform) of the whole system, and its subsequent procurement is much more difficult than hardware. Because the system software in the information system is like the expressway or the railway in the transportation system, once we build according to the expressway standard, we can only run cars; If it is built according to the railway requirements, it can only be built at an unknown address. Cars or trains running on the road are our applications. Therefore, when the system software and tool software are fixed, that is, the system development platform and application environment are fixed, subsequent procurement can only be upgraded, and replacement is almost impossible. To this end, on the one hand, we require users to choose some products that are not in a monopoly position but belong to the mainstream when making plans and programs; On the other hand, when we bid for the first time, we asked the original manufacturer to make a commitment to future upgrades and services. Generally speaking, direct negotiation with the original manufacturer is a desirable scheme for subsequent procurement of system software and tool software, but how to meet the relevant provisions of the Government Procurement Law is a difficult problem. In addition, due to the monopoly position of many software and hardware products in information systems, it is necessary to explore and try to solve this problem. As mentioned earlier, application software developers can be compared to a vehicle. In theory, users can change it at any time, but considering the human, material and financial resources that have been invested, the prototype of the application software has taken shape, and it is impossible to recruit another developer unless it is reinvented. Because car scrapping has a residual value, and application software scrapping has no income. In view of this, the author thinks that the follow-up procurement of application software can only adopt a single source method, and asks the advisory Committee to carefully check its workload and consult with similar projects. Of course, because the original developer is also very aware of its uniqueness, the negotiations are extremely difficult.