Cloakie Daggerie

The plot sure thickens over the RM965m George Kent-Lion Pacific Ampang LRT systems work job award.

Allegations of interference in the selection process has yet to die a silent death only for news that the British Engineering firm appointed as independent evaluator ofthe eight bidders  is under probe by theMACC.

BTW, whatever did happen to your TRIO in the Teoh Beng Hock’s case, MACC?

Back to Halcrow: reading the news article with nada a byline in the Star Online seems to suggest a link existing between the firm and Balfour Beatty, one of the firms in the list of JVs tendering for the job, citing several previous jobs.

Among others: "A search of both companies revealed that directors and top officials of both Halcrow and Balfour Beatty had positions in joint-venture companies established by both companies to bid for the Hounslow Highways PFI contract in the UK. It did not win that bid."

Uh oh. Serious casting of aspersions on the impartiality of the firm in question this article does.

Not sure how these adhoc JVs work, but surely someone somewhere from the list of bidders would have rung alarm  bells early on during the pre-awarding disclosure or not?

After all, some of the link ups of the two firms are Google-able public domain material.

Didn’t Syarikat Prasarana Berhad – Halcrow’s employer - know of the  “relationship”?

Question Time: If the evaluation process is flawed vis a vis this, ahem, newfound discovery, does it then make the whole process invalid?

Should there be a second round of evaluation to ensure the JV offering the best value for a publicly funded project is chosen?

Then again, a reported 15 months had lapse from the closing of the tender and its eventual award just recently. So probably not gonna happen.

Balfour Beatty’s JV – according to unconfirmed reports – had placed the lowest bid.

An article in the Edge – which I can’t seem to trace but which was picked up by The Malaysian Insider – meanwhile quoted industry sources as speculating that the winning JV will more likely subcontract out a major portion of the works in question.

From The Malaysian Insider: According to The Edge, George Kent even approached Balfour-Beatty tobecome one of the subcontractors but industry executives claimed the UK-basedconsortium had spurned the offer.

Sure boggles the mind, doesn’t it all…

Welcome to the wonderful world of the mega contracts where the risks and the profits are equally mega in size.

Very  Cloak and Dagger-ish, eh?