KINIBIZ Last Friday Prasarana announced the winner of the bidding for the LRT3 PDP job: the joint venture between Malaysian Resources Corporation Berhad (MRCB) and George Kent (M) Berhad.

This means the duo accomplished an incredible feat in edging out five other reported contenders including parties with more substantial track record for such a job. Given recent history and controversy concerning George Kent in particular, the news raises many questions.

One curious point is that George Kent surmounted what seems incredible odds in the job win after much controversy over its previous appointment of overall systems integrator for the RM1 billion Ampang LRT line extension.

To recap, a part of the controversy over the July 2012 appointment was an alleged failure on George Kent to pass both the competency and commercial evaluation for the contract, according to critics including Pandan member of Parliament Rafizi Ramli.

“George Kent has not only failed financially, but worse, it got one of the lowest [scores] when it came to technical competence,” he told the media in July 2012, citing a technical evaluation report on bidders for the job.

According to the document produced by Rafizi, the consultant evaluating the bidders found that the George Kent joint venture for the Ampang LRT job would not be able to “successfully deliver”, among others citing a lack technical experience as well as an absence of any previous rail-related experience - the company had not undertaken any projects worth more than RM40 million at that point.

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This article was written by Khairie Hisyam.