Mumbai civic body's city plan gets good response

The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) is gearing up for the bidding process for its comprehensive city plan based on a SWOT analysis of Mumbai.

Under NURM norms, cities eligible for grant have to undertake SWOT analysis, prepare a city development plan and city investment plan.

In response to its invitation, the corporation has received 16 expression of interests (EoIs) which is far more than what the civic body had expected, said the MCGM additional commissioner Manukumar Srivastava. Interestingly, the list includes quite a few names from abroad as well. The last day of submitting the offer was Wednesday.

"We have a got a good number of bidders to choose from. We will do the preliminary scrutiny of these offers and within a week the agencies will be shortlisted," said Srivastava.

The shortlisting process will be based only on one criteria - that of experience. "Our basic condition is that the agency should have the experience of preparing a similar plan for a city with a million plus population. Those who have not prepared such a plan earlier will not be entertained," Srivastava said.

Those who qualify on account of experience will be asked to submit their detailed techno-economic bids. But before that the corporation will invite them for a pre-bid meeting in the last week of this month to explain the entire scope of the work.

"Basically, we will explain the concept of the plan to the qualified agencies so that everybody understand the work before they give their financial and technical quotes," said the addtitional commissioner.

By mid December, the corporation expects to receive bids and will follow a quality-and-cost based assessment process. "The bids will not be evaluated only in terms of cost but also on the technical strengths of the agency," said Srivastava.

Once it is done, the proposal will be submitted to the standing committee. And as soon as the committee which is a statutory body, looking after proposals worth more than Rs 10 lakh, approves it, the corporation will have the consultant in place, hopefully by the year end.

And making of city investment plan (CIP) and city development plan (CDP) will soon follow with the consultant. "The entire process of scripting these plans will be interactive including the stakeholders in all sections and the public," said the commissioner.

Land use plan has to be prepared by the consultant. "This plan is vital to the success of the entire project as it is the base. And it will will take nothing less than a year," said he. And it is only after a year time that the actual developement could be seen in the city.

The agencies who have come up with EoIs include Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Crisil, SICOM, SCE- Creocean India and LEA International Ltd, Canada.