Implementing Infrastructure Procurement and Delivery Management
National Treasury has published their Standard for Infrastructure Procurement and Delivery Management in late 2015. This standard became applicable during 2016.
New ISO Standards are being prepared to provide the project delivery stages and governance structures required for effective project delivery. These will be available soon!
What does the SABEeX Delivery Management System do?
The SABEeX Delivery Management system has been developed with the concepts embodied in the National Treasury SIPDM for project delivery. These principles of good practice have been converted into practical modules that are set up to facilitate the effective implementation within an organisation.
The SABEeX Delivery Management System has been structured in a modular manner to provide users with separate functions within an organisation with access to complementary data relating to Portfolios, Projects and down to the Procurement level.
Portfolio Planning and Management
Organisations can arrange various groups of projects under different custom Portfolios. This can be arranged in terms of the Organisation's existing functional structures (such as New Projects, Maintenance, Operations etc) or in terms of geographical location of the projects (North Region, South West Region, Eastern Region etc). These custom portfolios provide a structure for grouping projects together.
Projects can be allocated to different portfolios as soon as they are identified, and their timing and approved budgets can be captured in the system. Updates can be readily undertaken at any stage.
All infrastructure delivery gates can be custom-defined as per the National Treasury Standard, and the Organisation's Infrastructure Policy.
Deliverables and activities can be set as requirements prior to gate approvals, and delegations linked to the responsible roles or persons who should deliver these.
Delegations to specific roles can be set up, per role and each user within the organisation can be allocated a specific action, or product to deliver for approvals by others.
Annual budgets can be planned, managed and tracked in real time, ensuring that budgets are spent within the financial year. Annualised planning is also provided.
Procurement Management Toolkit
Careful management of the procurement process ensures transparency and an auditable process ensures compliance!
This comprehensive toolkit manages all procurement activities, from tender notification, through tender publication, distribution and even notification of tender submissions received and awarded. Publicly available tenders as well as invited tenders can be published equally easily through this toolkit.
Tender notices are captured in a standard format allowing them to be carefully previewed on an organisation's customised website.
Once verified, an interested tenderer can log in and download procurement documentation directly from the website. This is fully tracked and audit reports are available to the publishers.
Tender queries submitted by tenderers are managed through the website, with responses being sent to all tenderers by email. Records are also maintained as part of the audit trail.
Any addenda are published through the system and interested parties are immediately informed to download the documentation that relates. Downloads are once again tracked to maintain the audit trail.
Clarification or briefing meetings are also managed, with attendance being logged with the procurement process. Online briefings on virtual platforms such as Zoom or MSTeams are facilitated. A unique feature provides for on-demand briefing materials to be published as either html or video formats, allowing tenderers to view the materials as often and as many times as required. Each visit is tracked and logged to maintain the audit trail.
Tender closing is tracked and records of all submissions received are logged on the Toolkit and automatically published together with the Notice. This keeps track of the traditional opening of tender boxes by the client, and captures information on the names of tenderers, prices tendered, copies submitted and more. Tender closing information can be made public together with any combinations of the information captured. All such information is published on the Tender Notice Page after tender closing time.
Contract award is tracked and when logged on the system, is also automatically published alongside the Tender Notice Page to provide a full, public record of the tender process.
Tender outcome letters can be customised with an Organisation's stationery and wording to facilitate the notification of all tenderers of the outcome of a procurement process. This saves enormous time and effort releasing SCM officials to focus on the preparation of contract documentation!
Tender validity is also managed by the system, with warnings to the tender publisher if a tender is reaching the end of the tender validity period and an outcome has not yet been recorded. The system can request tenderers to extend their tender validity by email or automatically recorded on the system. Tenderers have the option to not extend their validity, or to extend their validity with or without amendments. These are all recorded on the system if the automated option is selected, and this information is available to evaluators to take into account as part of the audit trail.
Online Tender Box
The impact of COVID-19 put pressure on the world, and many entities reacted by putting in place temporary measures to receive tender offers without coming into personal contact with others. SABEeX took the opportunity to ensure that a permanent solution to receiving tenders online was implemented that is secure, transparent, efficient, and can be fully audited.
An Online Tender Box was conceptualised and provides a superb means of receiving submissions securely and efficiently without compromising on best practices in keeping the content confidential, whilst keeping a balance of ease of access by authorised and appointed persons to evaluate the offers.
The Online Tender Box provides tenderers with a user friendly interface to upload their submissions (as many files as required for a complete submission) whilst keeping careful track of the time to submit offers with a countdown timer. Once all files have been uploaded, the tenderer formally confirms their submission before the closing time. This automated tender box results in complete transparency in the submission process, and no late submissions can be received. Complete tender submissions made ahead of closing are automatically published immediately after the tender closing time. This ensures the integrity of the tendering process.
Tender evaluators can be identified before or after tender closing time. They are individually appointed by the tender publisher and sent an invitation email appointing them to undertake tender evaluation for a specific procurement process. Only if the evaluator has accepted the appointment and logged in to the system to verify their identity are they able to view the Online Tender Box. Only once an evaluator has verified that they have no conflicts of interest with each tenderer can they access and download the submissions for evaluation purposes. Once again each activity is tracked for audit purposes.
Contract Management Toolkit
Contract documentation is uploaded and made available for future reference. Contract parameters such as contract value, duration, and the parties to the contract are all maintained on the Toolkit.
Progress payments are captured on a regular basis, together with progress estimates. Comments are also captured at any time.
Summarised reports are provided to show progress and achievements towards the completion of projects within a Portfolio.
Framework Contract Management Toolkit
Framework Contracts that are let are managed through this toolkit
Upload of framework contract documentation into a secure repository
Ability to either share the framework contract with outside organisations or to keep it only for the owner organisation
Outside parties may apply to use shared framework contracts. Only authorised parties are allowed access to create draft Task Orders.
Task Orders documentation must be checked and verified by the Owner organisation before it can be used.
Logging of budgets and commitments relating to each Task Order created.
Logging of timeframes related to each Task Order created.
Logging of progress payment certificates and progress related to each Task Order created.
Consolidated reporting on progress, budgets and expenditure under a specific framework contract (consolidated reporting of all Task Orders placed under the framework contract)