Subject: Procurement assistance to project management units under WARM Facility

Case followed by: NTA/HC
Consultation letter

Hanoi, 26th May 2025,

Dear Madam/Sir,
AFD is honoured to call on you for the consultation mentioned above. Please be aware of the submission requirements outlined in this consultation letter, as well as the attached package which consists of: (i) terms of reference, (ii) a proposed contract, (iii) a financial annex.

For more details, please see the attached file : https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1_ktdaTDZMy454gQbp7Fdz5fVMjBfjoxg

1. Purpose of the consultation

Agence Française de Développement (hereinafter “AFD”) has received a financing from European Union, and intends to use part of the funds thereof for payments of the Service under the following WARM Facility (hereafter “Facility”).

The Facility was designed to respond to the various needs of the national and provincial stakeholders involved in water and natural resource management in urban and rural environments (e.g. urban resilience, irrigation, floods management, coastal erosion, etc.) in response to climate change effects. It aims to make at-risk areas more resilient to climate change, particularly on Vietnam's coastal areas and in the Mekong Delta, through following specific objectives:

1. to improve the resilience to climate change of communities in vulnerable areas;
2. to support and optimize environmental and social performance of projects related to water and natural resources management in a context of climate change;
3. to support policy and strategic dialogue related to water and natural resources management in a systemic approach by addressing water and flooding management at the river basin level and risk-sensitive urban planning.

In addition to its three specific thematic objectives listed, the Facility was also designed to support the PPMU in improving the quality of the project and the proposed solutions.

The Facility is structured around four inter-related components, through Component 2 (Project Implementation Support), the WARM funds are designed to provide crucial support for project implementation through technical assistance, enhance capacity building, provide training for trainers, develop support decision making tools and offer other essential supporting measures. These funds are vital for ensuring the long-term sustainability of investments financed through AFD loans.

Technical assistance is demand-driven may include the following :

i. Project implementation monitoring (construction works supervision, administrative and financial monitoring of the loan agreement, monitoring of the project's environmental and social impacts, etc.); and
ii. Technical issues specific to the project, such as :

- Support in implementation of nature-based solutions;
- Support in carrying out risk and vulnerability studies;
- Support in carrying out integrated coastal and water resources management (ICZM and IWRM) plans;
- Training of urban planning teams regarding flood risk management;
- Training of technicians in charge of the maintenance of hydraulic infrastructures, and
- Other specific topics to be identified according to the project’s needs.

The Services of the Consultant shall consist of the following missions:

(i) Establish and/or review the Terms of Reference (ToR) for international Technical Assistance (TA) consultancy services to PMU and develop a detailed budget estimate;
(ii) Develop all Bidding Documents as per AFD’s Procurement Guidelines and Standard Bidding Documents (SBDs);
(iii) Provide hands-on training to AFD and PMUs on evaluation criteria;
(iv) Develop and finalize Requests for Expressions of Interests (REOI), and assist in the evaluation of EOIs;
(v) Develop Request for Proposals (RFPs) for procurement of the TA component and provide support to AFD and PMU to assess technical and financial proposals; and
(vi) Provide support to PMU for drafting the contract.

The Consultant will be engaged via a purchase order for each service requested by AFD. The total contract value shall not exceed 115.000 €.

AFD invites you to submit an offer for the following services: “Procurement assistance to project management units under WARM Facility”.

Your proposal must meet the presentation requirements described in this consultation, and include any additional information that you consider relevant.

2. Conditions of dispatch and deadline for delivery of the covers
Your offer must be received by 17.00 Hanoi time on June 10th by e-mail (using the standard Microsoft Office or equivalent versions) at nguyenta@afd.fr; vasseurd@afd.fr and lebihana@afd.fr.

In this case, your email response should not exceed 6 MB. If this is the case, please split your response into several emails. The period of validity of tenders is 90 days from the deadline for receipt of tenders.

3. Presentation of applications and offers
Your offer, written in English (or French), must include the following:

1. Application documents: a certificate of honour (see Annex 1)

2. Tender documents

Responses will be required to follow the following template:

A. Summary of your offer:
A.1 - Understanding of AFD’s expectations
A.2 - Summary of the steps in your intervention
A.3 - General Mission Schedule

B. Strengths and Added Value of your offer to carry out this mission

C. Detailed description of your offer:
C.1 - Detailed description of proposed steps (diagnosis, analysis, action plan, reporting, etc.) and endorsement process of the conclusion of AT (Teamà
C.2 – Resources and Methods to be implemented
C.3 – Key Stakeholders and practical methods of piloting the mission
C.5 - Detailed planning and timetable

D. Recommendations of the Service Provider for the successful completion of the mission

E. Presentation of the Procurement Experts that will be involved in this mission :

- CVs (maximum 3 pages per expert)
- List of projects/references, highlighting the Development Partners and Foreign Consulting Firms with whom they have collaborated or worked.

F. Detailed financial proposal (based on the financial annex attached)

G. The completed draft contract

The answers to this consultation must be simple, concise and must respect the imposed format.
 
4. Bid judging

Incomplete proposals, delivered late or that do not meet the need expressed by AFD will not be accepted. Compliant bids will be judged and scored against the following weighted judgement criteria :

Criteria Weighting
1 - Price of services 20%
2 - Technical value 80%
2.1 – Quality of the methodology, organisation and means used to guarantee the performance of services 30 pts
2.2 - Demonstration of the skills, experience and knowledge of teams assigned to perform services 50 pts

After reviewing the offers, AFD reserves the right to enter into negotiations with all candidates who have submitted the most interesting offers in light of the criteria and weighting defined above.

AFD also reserves the right to award the contract on the basis of initial offers, without negotiation.

Where appropriate, in the context of these negotiations, successful candidates may be invited as many times as necessary by the contracting authority, under strict conditions of equality, to specify, supplement or modify their offer without substantial changes being made to the specifications.

A candidate who refuses to negotiate will be deemed to have maintained his last offer.
AFD reserves the right to organize several rounds of negotiations with all successful candidates.
5. Inquiries

For any additional information you may require, please contact us at the address indicated in the header of this consultation letter. Any questions concerning this consultation may also be addressed by e-mail to: lebihana@afd.fr / vasseurd@afd.fr/ nguyenta@afd.fr. Answers to candidates' questions will be sent exclusively by e-mail.

We remain at your disposal for any further information and please accept, Madam/Sir, our distinguished greetings.

Mr. Hervé Conan
Director of AFD in Vietnam 
Appendix 1 - Statement of Integrity, Eligibility and Social and Environmental Responsibility

This Call for proposal aims to:

Presentation of the candidate:

If the applicant is applying as one member of a consortium: (describe the consortium)

1. We hereby certify that neither we nor any other member of our joint venture or any of our subcontractors are in any of the following situations:
1.1) being bankrupt, wound up or ceasing our activities, having our activities administered by the courts, having entered into receivership, reorganisation or being in any analogous situation arising from any similar procedure;
1.2) having been convicted, within the past five years by decision of a court decision, which has the force of res judicata in the country where the project is implemented or of any other offense committed during the procurement or performance of a contract;
1.3) being listed for financial sanctions by the United Nations, the European Union and/or France for the purposes of fight-against-terrorist financing or threat to international peace and security;
1.4) having committed serious professional misconduct within the past five years during the procurement or performance of a contract;
1.5) not having fulfilled our obligations regarding the payment of social security contributions or taxes in accordance with the legal provisions of either the country where we are established or the Contracting Authority's country;
1.6) having been convicted, within the past five years by a court decision, which has the force of res judicata, of one of the acts mentioned in sections 5.1 to 5.4 below or of any other offense committed during the procurement or performance of an AFD-financed contract;
1.7) being subject to an exclusion decision of the World Bank since 30 May 2012, and being listed on the website http://www.worldbank.org/debarr ;
1.8) having committed misrepresentation in documentation requested by the Beneficiary as part of the contract procurement procedure.

2. In the case of a works or goods procurement procedure:
i. having prepared or having been associated with a consultant who prepared specifications, drawings, calculations and other documentation that are subject of the bid;
ii. having been recruited (or being proposed to be recruited) ourselves or any of our affiliates, to carry out works supervision or inspection for this contract;
3. If we are a government-owned entity, we certify that we have legal and financial autonomy and that we operate under commercial laws and regulations.

4. We undertake to bring to the attention of the Contracting Authority, which will inform AFD, any change in situation with regard to points 1 to 4 here above.

5. In the context of procurement and performance of the contract:
5.1) We have not and we will not engage in any dishonest conduct (act or omission) deliberately indented to deceive others, to intentionally conceal items, to violate or vitiate someone's consent, to make them circumvent legal or regulatory requirements and/or to violate their internal rules in order to obtain illegitimate profit.
5.2) We have not and we will not engage in any dishonest conduct (act or omission) contrary to our legal or regulatory obligations or our internal rules in order to obtain illegitimate profit.
5.3) We have not promised, offered or given and we will not promise, offer or give, directly or indirectly to (i) any person who holds a legislative, executive, administrative or judicial mandate within the State of the Contracting Authority regardless of whether that person was nominated or elected, regardless of the permanent or temporary, paid or unpaid nature of the position and regardless of the hierarchical level the person occupies, (ii) any other person who performs a public function, including for a State institution or a State-owned company, or who provides a public service, or (iii) any other person defined as a public officer by the national laws of the Contracting Authority, an undue advantage of any kind, for himself or for another person or entity, for such public officer to act or refrain from acting in his official capacity.
5.4) We have not promised, offered or given and we will not promise, offer or give, directly or indirectly to any private person who occupies an executive position in a private sector entity or works for such an entity, regardless of the nature of his/her capacity, any undue advantage of any kind, for himself or another person or entity for such private person to perform or refrain from performing any act in breach of its legal, contractual or professional obligations.
5.5) We have not and we will not engage in any practice likely to influence the contract award process to the detriment of the Contracting Authority and, in particular, in any anti-competitive practice having for object or for effect to prevent, restrict or distort competition, namely by limiting access to the market or the free exercise of competition by other undertakings.
5.6) Neither we nor any of the members of our joint venture or any of our subcontractors shall acquire or supply any equipment nor operate in any sectors under an embargo of the United Nations, the European Union or France.
5.7) We commit ourselves to comply with and ensure that all of our subcontractors comply with international environmental and labour standards, consistent with laws and regulations applicable in the country of implementation of the contract, including the fundamental conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and international environmental treaties,. Moreover, we shall implement environmental and social risks mitigation measures such as specified in the environmental and social management plan or, if appropriate, in the environmental and social impact assessment notice provided by the Contracting Authority.

6. We, as well as members of our joint venture and our subcontractors authorise AFD to inspect accounts, records and other documents relating to the procurement and performance of the Contract and to have them audited by auditors appointed by AFD.

Name:____________________ In the capacity of _____________________


Signature:______________________________


Duly empowered to sign the proposal in the name and on behalf of ____________________