TENDER PROPOSALS FOR BEACH ROAD DEVELOPMENT

TENDER PROPOSALS FOR BEACH ROAD DEVELOPMENT: 22.

Mr Charles Chong asked the Minister for National Development (a) why did the Government adopt the two-envelope system instead of the usual 'price only' approach for the Beach Road tender; and (b) how were the tender proposals evaluated and what safeguards were there to ensure that the evaluation was fair and objective.

Mr Mah Bow Tan: Mr Speaker, Sir, the Beach Road site offers a unique opportunity to realise a large scale, high-quality landmark development for our city centre. The development promises to be a major element of the city skyline as it will be highly visible from Nicoll Highway, the Padang, War Memorial Park and Marina Bay. At the same time, the site poses a number of design challenges due to the scale of the development, the unique context of the site, the need to integrate the development with the Esplanade MRT station, and the need to sensitively complement four conserved buildings.

Hence, the Government has adopted a two-envelope tender approach for the Beach Road site to allow us to achieve a high-quality development that can add value to our city and, at the same time, achieve a competitive price. The conventional "price only" tender approach is not able to achieve both these objectives. Although it is possible to stipulate broad planning and urban design parameters under the "price only" tender approach, such guidelines cannot assure the quality of the development as a whole.

The Government has used the two-envelope system twice prior to the tender for the Beach Road site - for the Urban Entertainment Centre site at Victoria Street in 2005, and the Collyer Quay site in 2006. Under this approach, tenderers are required to submit two envelopes at the time of tender submission - one containing the Concept Proposal and the other containing the Bid Price. The Concept Proposals are evaluated first by a Concept Evaluation Committee (CEC), which comprises representatives from both the public and private sectors who have the relevant experience and knowledge regarding development projects as well as expertise in evaluating architecture and urban design concepts.

Proposals that are deemed to be acceptable by the CEC then move on to the second stage of tender evaluation. At the second stage, the price envelopes of only the short-listed tenderers are opened. The site is then awarded to the tender with the highest bid among the short-listed tenderers, taking into consideration the Government's reserve price. The price envelopes of the other tenders that are not short-listed are returned un-opened.

In line with the vision for the Beach Road site, the evaluation criteria for the site focused on four key aspects: (i) appropriateness to context; (ii) quality of architecture; (iii) composition and placement of uses; and (iv) track record of the tenderer and the design team. These criteria have also been used by the Government in evaluating the concept proposals for the two Integrated Resorts.

Various steps have been adopted for the Beach Road site tender to ensure that the criteria are transparent and well understood. These include a public briefing to all prospective tenderers on the evaluation criteria early in the process to ensure that they are clear on the tender conditions before they work out the details of their proposals.

All the prospective tenderers have also been given an opportunity to present their proposals to the CEC after the close of tender.

The use of the two-envelope system, the assessment criteria, the composition of the CEC and the final award of the tender have been approved by a Ministerial Committee, comprising the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Law, the Minister for Trade and Industry, the Minister for National Development and the Second Minister for Finance.

We have and we will continue to apply the two-envelope system very selectively for Government Land Sales sites where we want to achieve very specific development outcomes.

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