Train 18 series, part VIII..Public Procurement Policy is certainly not a disabler!!

What about the procurement actions as such? We, like other government organizations, had to follow the Public Procurement Policy provisions and guidelines. There are a lot of misconceptions about these policies; the prime misgiving among purchasers and suppliers being the intent and the process of execution. Most people seem to believe that the policy prevents you from buying the best and L1 syndrome guides you to go to the lowest bidder with quality and durability of the product given a short shrift. This is far from the reality. The policy guides you to make sure that public funds are used judiciously and that some form of level playing field is available to aspiring suppliers vis-à-vis the established ones. As a government executive dealing with public money, one must have the courage of conviction to decide which product(s) would be the best for an application and then go about ensuring that with a cogent argument. The policy does not prevent you from doing it. I would go so far as to say that it empowers and enables you to do it. Many executives find it surprising but it enables you to decided a case even if you get one bid in a tender, given certain conditions.

The problem is that many government executives want a procurement solution on a platter without them having to exercise their judgement and show firmness of purpose in the face of easy way out of going with the least controversial path; they find it safe to follow the path of least resistance and let a sense of propriety be twisted to justify sub-optimal procurement action. They would like to work like a top executive in a private firm who is entitled to do it straight and no questions asked. But they forget that such an executive also carries responsibility towards the shareholders, board and bottom line of the company and his decisions are not whimsical. I agree that at times even the boldest executives may take the safe option; they may find it difficult to judge what would be right or take the easier way out even to avoid complaints, complications and accusations. Remember that even the most powerful person on earth, the then President of the US, Obama accepted that the Obamacare software had issues initially as the agency assigned the job was chosen through a state procurement policy! But such cases should be exceptions, not a de rigueur.

Shakespeare speaks through Hamlet, “Why, then, ’tis none to you, for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Absolutely. If your thought is clear in what you want to purchase or develop, and do it through who and why, there is every feasibility of achieving it, even in a government set up. 

All procurement actions, whether arising out of our consultancy contracts or otherwise had to be done very quickly. I had briefed the readers on how we went about ordering sub-assemblies and components based on conceptual drawings for items still under detailed designing by ICF in association with the consultants. The same principle was followed for all other procurement actions related purely with the design and development effort of ICF on its own. Time was not on our side. Quick finalization of procurement process was a must for fast development of sub-assemblies by the vendors.

Public procurement guidelines do not prohibit you from sourcing an item from a lone source. It does not preclude formation of a panel of competent vendors and calling bids only from these vendors in a special limited tender. It enables you to specify an eligibility criteria in an open advertised tender such that 80% of the order goes only on approved established sources or sources who meet the specified eligibility. It provided a way to eliminate frivolous or unworkable offers. But for all this to happen, you must be clear and unbiased in your justification. If you are not convinced, your pen will reflect that and the case would go in a wishy-washy wasteful or damaging spiral.

Judicious selection of vendors is of great import for success of a project of this magnitude in truncated time lines. Empowerment of field units by Railway Board, provided for in recent years, existed and the fruits had to be plucked by us in selection of vendors in a fast track procurement process.

In all critical areas, we had to order the items from established and proven vendors who had either supplied to train sets globally or were truly competent to do so. In addition, the emphasis to procure from Indian vendors as far as feasible was not to be forgotten. I am proud to say that most of the team members at ICF, including those from Stores and Finance realized this and did not shy away in deviating from the regular sarkari way of dealing with Stores cases. I cannot recall many cases in which the order was placed on someone who failed to react and deliver in time with quality, barring of course, some handful of cases. Yes, there were some officers who would not see straight and find all kinds of excuses or reasons against bold actions. Their way of conveying their negativity, disguised cleverly under fake positivity, would be something in the fashion of this great philosophical ghazal of the poet Ghalib; you will do well to skim it on surface without going into the deeper meaning here and you would know what I am saying:

Na tha kuchh to khuda tha, kuchh na hota to khuda hota Duboya mujhko hone ne, na hota main to kya  hota.

Hui muddat ke Ghalib mar gaya par yaad aata hai Wo har ek baat par yeh kehna ke yun hota to kya hota.

Getting over the sporadic negativity was never a major challenge although this form of nay saying and nitpicking was perhaps more inimical for the project than jalebi-making. Support from Sri. Trivedi, the PCME at managerial level and S/Sri Vavre and Srinivas, the CDEs, on technical issues, was for the asking. With the procurement actions bottled up in the way required, it was a matter of engaging the selected vendors in the design process meaningfully; since most of the sub-assemblies and components had some technical novelty in them, these key vendors had to be an important part of the development. For example, development of a noise-free comfortable air-conditioning (AC) equipment. It required development of three prototypes of AC ducting and complete re-design of the AC units midway of the project even after approval of drawings. The selected partner, an Indian company with vast experience on IR and Metros, re-designed the complete equipment and delivered the same without affecting timelines significantly.

As I mentioned earlier, hard core design work on Train 18 had started in May 2017 and the consultancy contracts were in place by June 2017. Why am I emphasizing so much on the interaction with European consultants? Simple because it proved out to be a novel way for ICF, and therefore IR, to empower it’s staff towards some path breaking work and get be equipped for more complicated design work in future. I may have a rather sketchy insight into what was going on but the inaugural and concluding sessions of a series of design meetings with the consultants and the partner vendors, beginning July 17 till as late as third quarter of 2018, unmasked for me the novelty, effectualness and productivity of the exercise in hand. The meetings, incidentally, used to run from morning 9 o'clock to evening 8:00 p.m. without a separate lunch break.

The design meetings were frequently be attended by more than fifty design and drafting engineers at a time. There were some meetings within the meeting with one sub-group discussing on Brake interaction with propulsion, another group discussing interiors with cable layout engineers and some other group discussing mounting of under-slung equipment with various suppliers. I am not grandstanding here; these meetings and on site/off site interactions I keep talking about proved to be the bedrock of Train 18 project, the very pilasters on which the edifice of the prototype development was built.

I would like to think that Shakespeare wrote these lines for us but transplanted it for Helena in All’s well that ends well!

"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to Heaven."

 (to be continued....)