Mahanadi Coalfields Limited, a Mini Ratna Company of Coal India Limited under the Ministry of Coal, Govt of India , became the first Central Public Sector Undertaking to implement GePNIC - the e-procurement solution of NIC. Shri S. R. Upadhyay, Chairman cum Managing Director (CMD), MCL formally launched the web enabled application on the auspicious day of 63rd Independence Day of the nation, at MCL Headquarters, Sambalpur, Orissa in the presence of all the Directors , Chief Vigilance Officer (CVO) and SIO NIC, Orissa & Team and other dignitaries.

On the occasion, 3 live tenders ( 2 works & one services ) worth Rs 6 Crores 93 Lakhs were successfully published in the portal http://mcltenders.gov.in.

Background:

The MCL first approached NIC Orissa in the month of November 2008 to provide them a complete solution for e-procurement. This was followed by NIC Orissa e-procurement team’s visit to MCL head office in December 2008 for System Requirement Study.

CMD, MCL had the meeting with DG, NIC at New Delhi during the month of January 2009 to finalise detailed road map for customization of GePNIC & implementation at MCL. Subsequently a Gap Analysis study was carried out by “Earnst & Young” assisted by NIC Orissa & Chennai teams in the month of April. To facilitate Domain knowledge transfer, MCL team and NIC Orissa team visited Chennai twice for closer interaction with the development team.

The build testing and software feedback was provided on a day to day basis by MCL team & NIC Orissa team. The major enhancement in this module is “On-line Technical Evaluation” and facilitation for “Service” Contracts including works.

The system overview:

Work Experience, Fleet and Working Capital are the three pre requisites for the bidders to be eligible for services contracts while financial turnover, work experience and bid capacity based on certain business logic are three prime pre-requisites in works tenders of MCL. The tender creator specifies the requirements in each category while creating tenders online. The bidders just have to click on the items as per their availability based on master entries done by them while participating in a tender. The system flashes appropriate messages whether a bidder complies with the requirement for a tender or not and a bidder is allowed to participate even though he does not comply the requirements. The system finally selects the bidders based on the business logic built into the system as per MCL requirements.

The Inaugural Session:

A brief PowerPoint presentation on Orissa e-procurement with special emphasis on benefits, features and achievements was given by Shri A. K. Hota, TD, which was followed by publishing of tenders by clicking “Publish” button by CMD as the mark of Inauguration of the project.

During Inaugural speech by the CMD MCL, Shri Upadhyay, recalled the meeting with DG NIC at New Delhi and congratulated SIO NIC Shri S.K.Panda and team for making this happen in a short period of six months which is first of its kind among the subsidiaries of Coal India Limited. He also mentioned the names of Shri M. Manivannan, Sr.TD, Shri K. S. Raghavan, Sr.TD, Shri A. K. Hota, TD, Shri T. P. Ray , Scientist D and Shri N. R. Biswal, Scientist-C for special praise along with MCL e-Procurement team members Shri S. K. Bhanja, Project Manager e-Procurement, MCL, Shri O. P. Misra, SE, Civil & Shri S. K. Srivastava, Dy. Manager, Vigilance, for the successful launch of the e-tender portal.

SIO Orissa in his address expressed how NIC crossed another milestone by integrating On-line Technical evaluation to e-procurement application. He further stressed on the capacity building exercise to continue so that the system could be utilized optimally by all the concerned. He assured full support to MCL for future add-ons and fine-tuning of the application.

The programme ended with distribution of Mementos to the NIC team, followed by vote of thanks by Shri S. K. Bhanja, Project Manager e-Procurement, MCL.