Criteria Used by National Parks Board to Evaluate Tender Proposals for Landscape Maintenance Contracts

40 Mr Mohd Fahmi Aliman asked the Minister for National Development what criteria does the National Parks Board use to evaluate tender proposals for its landscape maintenance contracts to ensure that the focus is on service outcomes instead of lowest bidding price.

Mr Desmond Lee: NParks evaluates tender proposals for its landscape maintenance contracts based on the quality and price of the proposals. The quality criterion takes into account the tenderers' ability to deliver service outcomes through adopting landscape maintenance best practices, and ensuring safety, and rapid incident response and handling.

NParks has been steadily increasing the weightage of the quality criterion in its tender evaluations of landscape maintenance contracts over the last ten years, from 20% to the current 40%. This reflects an increasing emphasis on service outcomes, while striking a balance with the budget available to do the work.

NParks also requires tenderers to be registered in the Landscape Company Register (LCR) for at least two consecutive years when bidding for its landscape maintenance contracts. Companies on the LCR are required to fulfil the conditions of the Progressive Wage Model for the landscape sector, including training their employees appropriately for their job scopes. This requirement further ensures that tenderers train their employees sufficiently to deliver good service outcomes.