“The Unveiling: Unraveling the Reasons Behind the Exclusion of Son Hai Group from the $880 Million Highway Project”

The bid for the construction of the Ho Chi Minh City – Thu Dau Mot – Chon Thanh Highway, passing through Binh Phuoc province, with a value of over VND 880 billion, was managed by the Binh Phuoc Province Project Management Authority as the investor.

On March 17, 2025, the investor openly called for bids online, with five contractors participating. Among them, Son Hai Group Joint Stock Company offered the lowest price of VND 732.280 billion, along with a 10-year warranty commitment. However, on May 22, the investor decided to choose the highway consortium with a bid price of VND 866.455 billion. Son Hai Group and four other contractors were disqualified due to failing to meet technical requirements.

In a petition sent to the Project Management Board and the People’s Committee of Binh Phuoc province, Son Hai Group expressed their surprise and found the decision unconvincing, especially the reason of “not meeting technical requirements”. The Group accused the investor of showing signs of violating legal regulations in bidding practices and requested competent authorities to review the entire process of selecting contractors to ensure compliance with legal regulations and prevent dangerous precedents that could lead to a decline in trust in bidding activities.

According to the evaluation report on the bid dossiers (E-HSDT), four contractors, including Son Hai Group, were disqualified for failing to meet technical requirements. Specifically: Failing to meet the requirements for supplies and equipment provided for in the package; failing to meet the requirements for implementing the Building Information Model (BIM) in the package; and failing to meet the requirements for construction machinery and equipment to serve the construction of the package.

Chapter V, Section 3 of the E-HSMT stipulates: “The contractor must make a list of each specific type of materials, equipment, and bid goods below, clearly stating: Label, code (if any) and clear origin, do not list multiple types or list equivalents, besides, for materials and equipment installed in the work must meet standards of quality in terms of conformity and conformity (if any). If this requirement is not met, it will be considered technically unqualified and will be eliminated.”

However, in the list of materials, supplies, and main equipment under the medium voltage line and transformer substation items, Son Hai Construction did not bid, did not specify a specific code or commodity code to bid for the required type of materials, and did not have quality standards for specific types of materials, so there was no basis for evaluating the satisfaction of the E-HSMT.

According to the bidding experts, if Son Hai Construction wins the bid and is awarded the contract, the inviting party will have no basis for comparison, acceptance, and evaluation of the satisfaction of materials before construction as specified in the E-HSMT.

According to the current legal regulations, since the information about materials and equipment is missing and does not fall under the category of supplements or replacements, Son Hai Group’s E-HSDT is considered unqualified.

According to Decision No. 258/QD-TTg dated March 17, 2023, of the Prime Minister approving the Roadmap for the Application of Building Information Model (BIM) in Construction Activities, the application of BIM is mandatory under current regulations for construction management of construction drawing dossiers, quality management dossiers, and completion dossiers… However, Son Hai Group’s E-HSDT does not present a method for implementing this, so it is evaluated as unqualified according to the regulations in Chapter III of the E-DSDT.

In addition, Son Hai Group’s E-HSDT has 12 types of construction equipment without technical safety and environmental protection inspection documents or certificates of conformity as required by the E-HSMT. In a document dated April 16, explaining and clarifying the issue, Son Hai Group affirmed: “All 12 of our equipment have certificates of inspection as prescribed” so the contractor did not agree to replace but only supplemented the construction equipment with attached inspection documents for the inviting party to evaluate.