Handling operations

Dear officers,
Our corporation is fixing handling contract for the movement of food grains between railhead and depot complex, between the FCI internal siding and the roadfed godowns and between the godown within the complex. The market rate are appears to be compared with the other governmental agencies such as the CWC, SWC and State civil supply dept or the corporations etc. These agencies may also adopt the same for comparison sake. This method may end with ambigous as the date of collection of rate and the date of fixing the rate by the other agencies as the rate of labour, consumables, hire charges for the truck etc may vary with the time. To evaluate a standardised analysis for these type of work, by taking in to account of the hire chrages of truck including the driver and cleaner wages, loading unloading labour rates, diesel, mobile oil, speed of the vehicle for the given distance, no of trips can be done in a given distence etc., to be worked out. In Engineering works contract one analysis they are using for the transportation of all the engineering material as per the procedure laid down. This is well derived method by Central Public Works Department and being adopted by almost all the engineering organisation tose who are following the CPWD procedure and specification for their works including FCI & CWC. Inline with this FCI can derive a Standard Analysis format for the handling operaions contract with loading & unloading, with out loading & unloading component. The rates could be collected at the depot/ geographical area concerned as on the date of tender opening which will be a exact controlling factor for the tenderer.

It is hoped that this will be of more useful as this being used for tranportation of cement from one place to another with in a short distence of about 50 kilometres. The food grain bags weigh 50kg as that of the cement bags. If any body requires detais, they can contact their neighbour Engineering officers (civil) in this regard for getting clarifications also as they will be familiar with the lead chart as per the CPWD Rate analysis vol I.

Open tender is the only accepted transparent process

The suggestion given was not against the transparency. The public tendering system is transperant, that too in two bids system of E-Tendering. The question  is how to evolve a system to analyse the L1 rate, if it is too higher. This is possible when there is only one bidder in a particular locality, if there is a cartel formation when there is very few competitor, if the competitors are related, competitors adjust themselves etc.
The existing system of finding reasonableness of the rates quoted are by comparing the rates quoted in the previous contract which was accepted two years earlier. Another comparision is the rates approved by the other government organisation in the recent past which again extent up to two years old. These rates are also found to be not comparable since the distance between the two points i.e. origin and destination are different. Further the rate some times very low beyond the workability due to the personal reasons of the bidders to stand in the business which can not be expected for its applicability to any other organisation with different environment and at different point of time.
For example one of the state govt organisation is fixing rates differently for (i) internal movement with in the region of their own godowns as "internal",   (ii)Inter regional transaction with in the state as "External" and   (iii) movement between their godowns and FCI godowns with in the state. These three rates are different with Rate per MT per KM. There is a confusion which rate to be considered for comparision whether the L1 is reasonable or not.
The rate analysis commonly could be arrived based on the market rates of componant such as the hire charges of vehicle, diesel consumption and the mobile oil for transportation. For Handling the Charges being paid to the DPS workers Or the NWNP workers may be taken as base and a woking details may be formulated by the authority concerned so that at no time we may incurr more expenses on this H&T work more than the what it is to be.
The rate for transportation may also be arrived based on the approved rates of per MT per KM for the C&F agencies at railhead and other associations by any govt organisations or departments.
 This is only to have uniformity and standardisation of the analysis of the task required to be performed by the bidders.