PURCO SA Core Business Segments – Tender Management
PURCO SA has many years of tender management experience, a skilled team with expertise across a wide scope of commodity, service and infrastructure projects, and systems that are ISO 9001:2015 certified. As a consequence, PURCO SA was requested to assist with an average of more than 25 tenders every month during 2021-22.
INCREASED NUMBER OF TENDERS
The number of tenders published and managed by PURCO SA increased from 70 in 2017 to 303 in 2022. This represents a compounded annualised growth rate of 34% since 2017, and a 7.4% YoY increase from yearend 2021 to year-end 2022.
TVET TENDERS DOMINATE
Although TVET colleges only account for 22 of the 64 PURCO SA Members, they account for 60% of tenders managed during the year. TVET Members continue to utilise PURCO SA tender management services to help them overcome skills and resource constraints. During the 2021-22 financial year 180 TVET tenders were issued and administered, representing 60% of tenders managed during the year. Tenders for individual universities showed strong growth in 2022, up 38% for the year
GREATER LEVELS OF SUPPLIER ENGAGEMENT
A total of 3853 tender documents were purchased by suppliers over the period, an average of 321 per month. On average PURCO SA received and processed 13 bids per tender. The number of bids per tender varies widely - a single tender received 107 online submissions in 2022.
VIRTUAL TENDER MANAGEMENT
A simple online bid submission system was implemented in 2020. The initial basic system was totally redesigned and launched in 2022, with the inclusion of online evaluation and scoring functionality and the automation of many of the manual processes involved in tender management. The system is currently undergoing a third development iteration, which will take the technology from a tender advertising and online bid document submission system to an enhanced platform that enables the online management and submission of complex multi-element, multi-phase tenders with any type of data requirement. The number of tenders fully managed via the online submission system increased from 36 in 2020 to 68 in 2021 and 95 in 2022. This 40% year-on-year increase is a reflection of the system’s simplicity, security and standards compliance.
In the face of increase fuel costs, electricity supply instability and the continuing incidence of work-from home employees, the system provides important and useful benefits to all parties in the tendering ecosystem. Since its inception the system has facilitated the submission of more than 1000 online tender bids, some with bid packs reaching almost a gigabyte in size.