During evaluation of various tenders and discussions in the SPC, it has been noted that certain issues like tagging of requirements, receipt of single bid/single responsive bid, indents with the PAC certificate etc. need more elaborate clarifications so that there is uniformity and consistency in the procurements by all the Depts/Centres/Hospital in AIIMS.  To streamline the purchase procedures, the following guide lines  have been given in AIIMS Purchase Manual-2018 with the approval of Director, AIIMS which may kindly be followed by all the Departments/ Centres/ Hospital:

1. Some PIs request to tag their requirement with the tender in process for some other departments.  The procedure to be followed in such situations shall be as under:
   1. To cater to additional requirement or reducing the quantity, a standard tolerance clause is stipulated in all the tender documents and the resultant contracts as mentioned: “At the time of awarding the contract or during currency of the contract, the purchaser reserves the right to increase or decrease the qty. by up to twenty five (25) per cent, the quantity of goods and services (rounded off to next whole number) at the same price and terms and conditions”.
   2. In case the additional requirement is more than 25% which cannot be covered under standard tolerance clause, ideally, the tagging of requirement can be considered prior to the date of Technical Bid opening so that all participating firms can be intimated about the increase in the quantity to be procured and bids can be invited and submitted accordingly by the bidders.
   3. It is clarified that generally tagging post tender should be severely discouraged and is not allowed. The tender already floated should be procured only for the quantities put to tender and additional qty. to the extent of 25% under tolerance can only be covered.  The remaining quantity should be procured through a fresh tender.  Only in exceptional circumstances, in case of recorded urgency and depending upon merits, the tagging post tender can be considered for a qty. not exceeding the original tendered qty. with the procedure to ask for the quantity discount prior to price bid opening.
2. In case of single tender (received single tender or single shortlisted bidder) normally such cases are required to be re-tendered with the revised specifications. In such cases, if PI considers that no useful purpose will be served by re-tendering and the case be processed as the single tender single responsive tender, then PI would be required to submit detailed justification to consider the same by the Store Purchase Committee and Competent authority.
3. In case of proprietary items, it is noted that in some cases, the proprietary Article Certificate submitted by the PIs is based on the Proprietary Article Certificate submitted by the respective manufacturers/suppliers confirming that the specifications of the equipment are proprietary to them. It is clarified that as per rule 154 of GFR, the procurement from a single source may be resorted to under the following circumstances:
   1. It is in the knowledge of the user PI that only a particular firm is the manufacturer of the required goods.
   2. In a case of emergency, the required goods are necessarily to be purchased from a particular source and the reason for such decision is to be recovered and approval of the competent authority obtained.
   3. For standardization of machinery or spare parts to be compatible to the existing sets of equipment (on the advice of a competent technical expert and approved by the competent authority), the required item is to be purchased only from a selected firm.

      In this regard, it has been decided that in order to ensure transparency and fairness, all such cases except spare parts of a machine will be uploaded on the website for the open information for a period of 15 days to submit objections, if any by any manufacturer regarding proprietary nature of the equipment/items and thereafter, the proposal shall be submitted to Store Purchase committee and competent authority for approval. However, if certain objections are received, the same shall be referred to the concerned PI for comments and after receipt of comments the proposal shall be submitted to Store Purchase Committee and competent authority.

4. It has been noted that the request for conclusion or extension of contract for AMC.CMC for the equipment is received from some PIs after expiry of warranty or the AMC/CMC period. In order to avoid any situation wherein any supplier firm may repudiate the contractual obligations once the warranty/AMC/CMC period expires, all the Dept./users are requested to put up the AMC/CMC proposal at least six months prior to expiry of warranty or AMC/CMC period so that the proposals can be processed and approval of the competent authority may be taken well before expiry of warranty period or AMC/CMC period as the case may be.
5. It has been noted that some PIs while signing the notes on the note sheet do not put the date of signature which is not proper particularly in the procurement related files which are very sensitive. Therefore, all concerned are requested to put the signatures with date on the official notes.
6. It is mentioned that a bid documents for procurement of equipment a soft copy of the bid document may be downloaded from the website of AIIMS (AIIMS Purchase Manual-2018)  as number of tenders have already been issued by SODO) and the same be adopted by the Centres, MS(H), Dean (RS) for floating tenders for equipment.