Irony of Sh44m elephant sculpture by broke KWS

A vicious tender war between two private firms has exposed plans by cash-strapped Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) to put up a pricey Sh44 million elephant sculpture in the expansive Amboseli National Park.

Ironically, the state agency has for the past two years had a drop in revenues in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic that cut tourist numbers and income from park entry fees. 

This forced the National Treasury to offer it a Sh1.5 billion bailout to pay salaries and conduct animal census — raising questions on the probity of the agency’s decision to pump such a tidy sum on a sculpture.

The plan for the expensive sculpture has been exposed by a fight pitting Skel Solutions Ltd and KWS, which awarded the contract to Three Dee Exhibition Services.

KWS awarded Three Dee Exhibition Services the tender after it emerged the lowest bidder after quoting Sh44,620,000. Skel Solutions had quoted Sh62,646,200. All tenders were notified about the outcome through letters dated March 3, 2022.

But Skel Solutions was dissatisfied with KWS’ decision and filed a request for review of the tendering.

The company argued that KWS acted in contravention of mandatory qualification criteria set in the tender documents that required all pages in the bid documents to be serialised in a single numerical format.

Mandatory requirements

It stated that the bid submitted by Three Dee Exhibition Services should not have reached the financial evaluation stage for failing to conform to the mandatory requirement on the pagination of documents.

KWS admitted this, but explained that serialisation was not a major deviation since it did not materially change the substance of the tender.

The agency added that the price quoted by Skel Solutions was 40.8 percent above the budget set for the project of Sh44.5 million.

In a ruling delivered by the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board, KWS has been ordered to start afresh the process of searching for a contractor for the job that entails designing, building, installation and commissioning of bronze elephant sculpture “Tim” in Amboseli National Park.

The board, sitting in Nairobi, cancelled the tender following a finding that the tender documents — including photos of a model sculpture — submitted by the interested bidders were not properly paginated and serialised.

The bidders included Murray Grant Bronzes Ltd, Skel Solutions Ltd, and Three Dee Exhibition Services.

Aggrieved bidder

“It is evident that all the three [bidders] did not comply with the requirement for serialisation of their tenders. The board concludes that KWS erred in considering the non-conformity concerning serialisation to be an excusable minor deviation,” said the board.

“Given that all three tenders did not comply with requirements on serialisation, their tenders ought to have been disqualified for being unresponsive at the preliminary stage,” said the board chaired by Ms Faith Waigwa. It ruled that all the three bids ought to have been found unresponsive and disqualified.

The board added that serialisation of tenders is a mandatory requirement that all tenders must comply with along with other requirements set out under Section 74(1) of the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act for them to be considered responsive.

It also stated that the model sculpture submitted by the aggrieved bidder had not complied with the measurements set out in the tender document. 

KWS had asked bidders to submit a miniature replica sample with minimum dimensions of 30cm length, 12cm width, and 22cm at belly height.

But the review board noted that the tender document prescribed minimum dimensions and not the maximum.

“The board indeed observes that the miniature replica sample submitted by Skel is indeed bigger than those of the other tenders. The board agrees with the applicant that this requirement set the minimum but not maximum dimensions,” said the board.

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