Saved time and saved cost
In 2009, the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) implemented ‘Creation of a system of Public Procurement and Online Bidding Pilot’ project, EVN was honored to be one of the three units selected to participate in the pilot. Since then, along with the improvement of the legal system and infrastructure, EVN has been actively implementing solutions to promote online bidding. By 2020, many units of EVN have implemented 90% of competitive bidding packages, some units even reached 100% of competitive bidding packages via internet and in form of open online bidding. As a result, 10.94% of costs was saved through online bidding in 8 months of 2020.
At the same time, EVN has enjoyed a healthy and transparent competitive environment, creating favorable conditions for contractors to have equal and fair access to information; saving time, costs, shortening the time for contractor selection due to the digitization of the information system of bid invitation and bid procedures; simplifying procedures, limiting subjective errors, and so on.
In addition to the achieved results, EVN’s online bidding is still facing some difficulties and challenges. Specifically, the new online bidding system of the MPI allows downloading data with a maximum capacity of 300Mb, while many construction and installation bidding packages have very large-capacity drawings attached, bidding entity and contractors cannot upload all data to the system. The system was not capable to select contractors for international bidding packages, bidding packages with many packages, bidding packages using mixed contracts and large-scale procurement bidding packages using contracts with fixed unit price, and so on.
Comprehensive digital transformation in procurement and bidding
As a target set by EVN from 2021, 100% of its units will deploy online bidding with bidding packages in the form of competitive offering and open bidding.
However, in order to realize this target, in addition to the efforts by EVN and its member units, EVN recommends that the Ministry of Planning and Investment and related ministries/branches study and completely solve problems related to technical infrastructure of the national bidding network system. Specifically, there will be no limit to any bidding package in terms of scale, form of contractor selection, type of contract; prompt upgrade of the network system, to meet the increasing number of bidding entities and contractors, bidding packages; at the same time, promptly establish a database of contractors, investors-bidding entities, ready to check and update information on contractors' capacity; building a system to evaluate the reputation of contractors, investors/bidding entities.