We know that the "Procurement Law" has been implemented since 2003, but in fact, for a long time, the supervision of the financial sector is relatively relaxed, unlike the project that must be recruited according to law, it must enter the transaction, unified information release, unified document template, scoring standards, unified collection of bid deposits, unified selection of judges, unified bid evaluation venues, and relatively strict supervision. And many first-class procurement projects, especially units with their own income such as hospitals, may not strictly implement the first-class procurement process if they do not directly use financial allocation. In fact, according to the Ministry of Finance's "Financial Rules for Public Institutions", public institutions should include all revenues and expenditures in the unit budget, and fiscal funds refer to the funds included in the budget management, so as long as the hospital procurement project is within the catalog or above the quota standard specified in the "Hubei Provincial Centralized Procurement Catalogue and Standards (2021 Edition)", it belongs to the scope of procurement supervision.
In recent years, the state has increased the intensity of procurement supervision, and a lot of management measures have been introduced at the local level, so now the projects that belong to the procurement category are basically included in the financial supervision, from the budget, the letter, the intention to disclose, the information release, to the selection of judges, bid evaluation, transaction announcements, contract filing, must be strictly implemented in accordance with the prescribed process, which brings higher requirements to our procurement work.
Let's take a look at a case first, I believe you will know this project as soon as you look at it, which is also a hot topic on the Internet some time ago.
The purchaser of the urban sculpture project at the intersection of Yingbin Avenue in Lushan County is the Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau of Lushan County, with a project budget of 7.19 million yuan and a winning bid price of 71520,000 yuan. The tender announcement for this project was issued on June 14, 2023, and the bid was opened and the announcement of the winning bid was issued on July 6. This is a first-class procurement project, so in the "Henan Province ** Procurement Network" and "Pingdingshan City Public Resources Trading Public Service Platform" both ** have disclosed the project's bid evaluation and contract filing information, so many doubts on the Internet are not groundless.
Why is this sculpture project so popular on the Internet?The first is its winning bid price. Compared with the budget price, the decrease is only 05%, let's take a look at the ** comparison between Lushan sculpture and 2 other similar sculptures in China:
Although the aesthetics of sculpture is a more subjective thing, from the perspective of the scale and complexity of the project, it is obvious that the cost of Lushan's sculpture is a bit high, no wonder there are many discussions in online meetings.
At the same time, adding fuel to the fire of this Internet hotspot is that the project may be built before bidding, and it may be suspected of false bidding and collusive bidding if it is serious.
In addition, the staff of the procurement unit spoke in a rude tone when answering reporters' inquiries.
Now when the masses or people deal with the public service department, the work of the management department is secretly recorded from time to time, so we are required to be calm and impulsive when engaging in reception work. I believe that Mr. Li, who answered **, is also an ordinary staff member of the Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau, but because he didn't control his emotions when answering, he became famous all over the country. Therefore, we must be wary of our daily work.
Let's take a look at other information publicized by the "Henan Provincial ** Procurement Network", which is the first "Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Declaration Letter":
The annual operating income is more than 20,000 yuan, and it can be said that there was basically no business in the previous year.
Let's look at the judges' "Scoring Summary Table":
The technical and business scores of the first place are basically 50% higher than the other three, and at the same time, ** is the lowest, although it is relative to the budget of 7.19 million, 715The ** of 20,000 is not low, but the ** of the other three is even higher.
In addition, it can be seen from the evaluation list that the credibility and performance objective scores of the first place are full scores, while the other three are 0 points. I believe that people in the industry can guess the true situation of this bidding project when they see this.
In addition, some people on the Internet questioned that the payment terms of this project were too favorable, let's take a look at the provisions of the bidding documents and the actual situation of the contract:
It can be seen that the contract payment method does not match the description in the tender documents. We are engaged in bidding and procurement work all know that no matter according to the project bidding or procurement of which legal system, the contract signing must not violate the substantive requirements of the bidding documents, otherwise the core terms of the bidding documents can be modified at will after the bidding, then the bidding is obviously not serious at all.
Intuitively, there are a lot of problems with this project. So from the purchaser's point of view, what are the flaws of this project?
1.The budget is on the high side. The purchaser did not conduct sufficient market research, and the sculpture budget was obviously high. If the budget is 500,000 or even 1 million, it is estimated that it will be difficult to make such a big wave on the Internet;
2.The winning bid price is significantly higher than the market price of similar projects. The high budget alone is not enough to lead to the subsequent problems, but the lack of competition will inevitably lead to the next ** winning bid;
3.The contract modifies the substantive requirements for payment in the bidding documents, which violates Article 46 of the ** Procurement Law, which states that "the purchaser shall ...... with the winning bidder and the contractor."In accordance with the matters determined in the procurement documents to sign the first procurement contract“；Article 57 of the Regulations for the Implementation of the Tendering and Bidding Law "The tenderer and the winning bidder shall sign a written contract in accordance with the provisions of the Tendering and Bidding Law and these Regulations, and the main terms of the contract, such as the subject matter, price, quality, and performance period, shall be consistent with the content of the bidding documents and the bidding documents of the winning bidder".
4.It is suspected of being built before recruitment. The project that has not yet opened the bid has started;
5.The staff of the procurement unit treated social supervision roughly.
There was such a big public opinion incident, and the local government affairs were also dealt with and reported, and the party secretary of the procurement unit was dismissed and the staff who answered the first party was demerited, and we don't know whether there will be an in-depth review in the follow-up. However, when such a situation occurs, it is obvious that the purchaser's awareness of risk prevention is not strong, which eventually leads to the person in charge and the manager of the procurement unit being punished, which will definitely have a great impact on the future career. Therefore, as a purchaser, we must pay attention to risk prevention.
In the first half of this year, there was a similar case, which also caused great repercussions, and the person in charge of the procurement unit was also investigated and dealt with by the supervision department.
Because the public content of the procurement project has manufacturers, models and unit prices, it is easy to find out the winning products in other places on the Internet, especially the conventional procurement projects that everyone understands a little, such as sculptures, wiring boards, etc. If the winning bid price is much higher than the market retail price of the same product or similar products of the same manufacturer, it is obviously easy to attract attention and doubt. If the purchase is a "high-energy particle collider", no matter how many billions, everyone does not understand, it is estimated that no one will talk about it.
We know that in the current social environment, the Internet is often a cathartic window for various emotions, and when we see unreasonable phenomena, the collective voice of netizens often leads to public opinion risks, leading to the attention of management departments and even the intervention of discipline inspection and supervision departments. Like the previous two cases, the risk caused by the questioning and complaint of the project party was not due to the project, and the project was successfully completed. Instead, due to the disclosure of the bidding information on the Internet, it has attracted social attention and brought about a follow-up chain reaction.
*Procurement projects require the publication of the details of the winning bid, which puts forward higher requirements for the budget preparation of the purchaser.
Leaving aside the integrity risk, let's take a look at what are the procurement risks
From the perspective of the parties directly involved in the project, the risk factors are as follows:
1.At the management level, the leader has instructions (high qualifications, big brands, and the best reputation and quality);
2.At the demand level, the use department has a preference (accustomed to using a certain brand, hoping that the most advanced and reliable products will win the bid, and some purchaser judges even make guiding remarks in violation of regulations at the bid evaluation site);
3.At the procurement level, the purchaser himself may not have enough grasp of the policy and adhere to the principle enough;
4.At the same level, the qualification of the first institution has been cancelled, and some of the first institutions are not familiar with the policy, lack of experience, lack of responsibility, can not put forward reasonable suggestions to the purchaser, and cannot help the purchaser to avoid risks;
5.At the evaluation level, the randomly selected judges are not professional enough and may not necessarily be familiar with the bid evaluation equipmentWhen encountering a project with a large number of bidders and complex content, you may not be able to patiently and carefully review each tender in a hurry
6.At the business level, the business is a direct stakeholder of the project, and may be unscrupulous in order to win the bid, especially now that the procurement project is not allowed to collect bid deposits, and it is required to accept the declaration letter instead of the supporting materials of the relevant departments, which increases the risk of fraud and false bidding.
From the perspective of external risk factors, even if the project is successfully completed, there will be supervision and audit by the competent department and the audit department to review whether the process is compliant, whether the information is complete, whether it is reasonable, etc. For example, our company's cost department is often selected to participate in the financial review of local projects. Many projects have been recruited for several years, and there will be audit and supervision departments coming to us to access archived materials.
In addition, even if the project process is compliant and reasonable, if there is no attention to the supervision of contract implementation and performance acceptance, there may be quality and safety risks, such as the two gymnasium collapses in Heilongjiang Province this year, one of which is the school's gymnasium. The risks posed by social supervision have already been seen;Since the second half of this year, the country has carried out a concentrated rectification of problems in the field of medicine, and it should not be over yet, so there is no need to say much about the work of the discipline inspection and supervision departments.
Some people may say that there are too many risks and too much work. In fact, I believe everyone knows that the procurement risk is far more than the previous ones. **How to prevent procurement risks?From a macro level, we can establish rules and regulations, strengthen education on clean government, and strengthen the sense of responsibility. From an operational point of view, it is recommended to start from the following aspects to reduce the procurement risk caused by the purchaser.
First, according to the provisions of the "Demand Management Measures", do a good job in demand review. The first is formal compliance (including imported products should be subject to import demonstration, and a single ** project should be single** demonstrated), and secondly, there should be no obvious discrimination and tendencies. Because the main body of responsibility for these work links is the purchaser, the subsequent opening and evaluation work can rely on the assistance of experienced and familiar with policies and regulations.
At present, the ** procurement project in Wuhan has required to upload the relevant information of the demand survey on the platform before the next procurement activity can be carried out.
What does a needs survey do?The Measures for the Management of Procurement Demand stipulate that purchasers can conduct demand surveys through consultation, demonstration, questionnaire surveys, etc., to understand the development of relevant industries, market supply, and historical transaction information of similar procurement projects. Some purchasers may say that we only purchase once in several years, and we are not familiar with the subject matter of the purchase, and we cannot assume this responsibility. In fact, the "Measures for the Management of Procurement Needs" also stipulates that "the purchaser may organize and determine the procurement demand and prepare the procurement implementation plan on its own, and may also entrust the procurement agency or other third-party institutions to carry it out". Some public institutions in our province have specially arranged an annual budget of 600,000 yuan per year to entrust a third-party ** agency to conduct demand investigation and assist in the preparation of procurement plans. Our company has also undertaken the demand investigation work entrusted by some owners, or accepted the entrustment of the purchaser to review the demand investigation and procurement implementation plan done by other ** companies.
The second is to understand the policies and regulations, in addition to the procurement of a law and regulations, order 87, order 74, 2014 No. 214 document of the bidding, procurement specific operating regulations, especially to know the new national and provincial policy requirements in recent years, because many are closely related to the content of the bidding documents, mainly related to fair competition, optimization of the business environment, support for small and medium-sized enterprises, etc., such as the procurement project is not allowed to collect bid deposits, quality deposits, project warranty reduced to 15%, 85% of the progress payment and so on.
Finally, if you encounter some controversial issues, if you don't know which policy document to check, the safest way is to check the 2019 negative list of Hubei Province (for purchasers and ** a total of 39 articles) to see if you can do it, because the negative list lists all the things that all parties cannot do, and is accompanied by a policy basis or an information announcement case of the Ministry of Finance. Even if the final decision-making level does not adopt it, at least you should be aware of it so that you can respond to problems in a timely manner.
If there is really a question, complaint or online public opinion, we must be cautious and not careless. First, it is necessary to communicate and question peacefully (express the facts and reasons clearly in a peaceful way, avoid excessive words and deeds, and prevent being recorded and videotaped), and the second is to correct obvious mistakes in a timely manner, and if it is not possible, the next step of the work process can be suspended, such as the issuance of bidding documents and bid-winning announcements. In addition, it is necessary to take the initiative to report to the competent department or regulatory department for instructions and make a record.
Today, combined with the case of sculpture in Henan Province, I have made a brief analysis of the procurement risk prevention, hoping to help you in the future.