PANJIM: The ball has started rolling and Panjim will soon be a smart city. If all goes well, it will be a reality by as early as August this year. Imagine Panaji Smart City Development Ltd (IPSCDL) launched its proof of concept (POC) for the leading four bidders who have thrown their hat in the ring to seek a project on Goa Intelligent City Management System (GICMS). This exercise or drill will run till Saturday.
The criteria was to ensure that the bidders who have so far projected themselves on paper are now putting up a live demonstration of their worth and commitment. Most reasons why a large government project fails are because of the lack of coordination and lack of the promised delivery on paper during the bid. After this technical exercise, the financial bids will be opened for the qualifiers and the lowest bidder will get the job of this project.
IPSCDL ensured that while creating the tender document it had penned down that a POC was a mandatory qualification for getting the technical evaluation cleared. A committee has been constituted by the Goa government which will finally decide on basis of the live performance. Senior government officials, including Urban Development Minister, have been invited to witness this live demonstration during this exercise.
This will give them the real feel of what traffic signals will be like in Panjim, how people are reacting to it and how an automatic challan would be generated for traffic violators.
The companies that are the final bidders are BSNL, Honeywell, L&T and NEC.
“I am confident that we would be able to give the work order by the second week of June and by August. We plan to complete the project in six months. This would include facilities like free WiFi, traffic management etc,” IPSCDL MD and CEO Swayandipta Pal Chaudhuri told Herald.
