The changes come about after an independent legal review was held into the procurement process that saw a multimillion-dollar council engineering contract awarded to a former employee with limited experience.
Despite the changes to its internal process, council said the review found it did not do anything wrong in its procurement process for the contract for engineering and associated services, which will see council engineering work previously done in-house done by an external company.
As such, council said the contract remained valid, with no grounds for it to be discontinued.
The review came after Pamecs Pty Ltd was awarded the contract — believed to be worth in excess of $2.4 million — just two months after the company was formed to tender for the job.
The News understands Pamecs director Mayanak Gupta was employed in February 2024 as a team leader in council’s engineering services.
Mr Gupta, who is aged in his late 20s, left council on August 1 this year.
A business search of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission shows that Mr Gupta’s company Pamecs Pty Ltd was registered as a business on August 5 — only three days before the tender for the engineering services contract was released by council.
As reported on October 10 The News questioned the procurement process for this contract after several sources expressed concerns about the tender process.
Councillors voted to award the contract for the engineering at a special council meeting on October 7, with this part of the meeting closed to the public as these tender decisions generally are.
In the process of awarding the tender, councillors would have been presented with all the different tenders, identified only by letters of the alphabet, rather than business names, as per council policy at the time with awarding tenders.
The News understands this meant that at the time of awarding the contract councillors were not made aware Pamecs was run by a former employee or that Pamecs had only recently set up an office at the Shepparton Business Centre. Nor were they told about Pamec’s apparent lack of project experience in delivering engineering services.
This de-identification process is one of the internal processes to change as part of the review.
Council said the policy would be updated so that the council executive and councillors were informed of tenderers’ names at internal briefings, while names remained de-identified for council meetings to mitigate any risk of canvassing.
Other changes will also include that council report templates will be expanded to build on the current ‘conflict of interest declaration’ in the tender process, by also listing any interests that have been declared.
There will also be greater detail on all identified risks, ensuring comprehensive assessment of any potential reputational risks.
Council said the engineering and associated services contract was a new arrangement designed to deliver service efficiencies, improved customer outcomes and cost savings.
Mayor Shane Sali said council’s priority was to “ensure the executive deliver on the efficiencies proposed under this contract – completing work quickly, to a high standard and in a cost-effective way”.
However, he also spoke about the changes that would now be made to council’s internal processes after the independent review of the awarding of this particular contract.
“Councillors identified clear learnings through this process, including the importance of executive informing councillors of all relevant information,” Cr Sali said.
“The recommendations adopted by the organisation will strengthen systems and improve efficiencies for future procurement processes.”
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