A flash disk mix-up during submission of tender documents for the construction of the Nairobi Railway City Central Station has cost the Chinese firm that built the standard gauge railway (SGR) a Sh29.5 billion contract.
The procurement regulator ruled that China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) erred after placing two flash disks containing its technical and financial bids in a single envelope, drawing protests from rival Chinese bidders.
The firms were expected to first table technical bids for evaluation before presenting their financial proposal to build the rail city, which was initially designed to include an eight-platform central rail station and a public space that would anchor commercial and residential developments on a 425-acre site that would host the railway transit hub.
The Public Procurement Administrative Review Board (PPARB) reckons that CRBC’s presentation of its technical and financial bids together breached mandatory tender requirements.
Rival bidders complained that the earlier tabled financial bid could have influenced the tender committee to award CRBC higher scores at the technical evaluation of the bids.
Three Chinese firms bid for the multi-billion shilling project, with CRBC getting a technical score of 87.1 against 100, beating rivals China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) and a consortium of China Overseas Engineering Group Company Limited & China Railway Group Limited that had 80.8 and 81.7 marks respectively.
CRBC was eventually awarded the tender after a financial bid of Sh29.5 billion, while CCECC quoted Sh22.9 billion and the consortium tabling a Sh32.5 billion plan.
The board termed the award of the tender to CRBC an illegality after declaring the company not to have qualified, nullifying the process and ordering Kenya Railways’ management to re-evaluate the two other parties for award within 21 days.
“Having established that the interested party’s (CRBC) bid ought not to have progressed for further evaluation at the financial evaluation stage, we find that the scoring of the financial proposals by the procuring entity’s evaluation committee as indicated in the evaluation report on 22nd December 2025 to have been erroneous and misguided for having considered the interested party’s non-responsive bid,” the PPARB stated.
“The 1st Respondent (Kenya Railways MD) is directed to complete the procurement process, including the making of an award, in the subject tender within 21 days of this decision taking into consideration the findings of the board herein.”
The PPARB verdict could save taxpayers Sh6.55 billion should the Kenya Railways award the tender to CCECC, the highest-scoring qualifying bidder, which quoted Sh22.98 billion.
The Nairobi Railway City Project was conceived in 2020 when the President Uhuru Kenyatta and then UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson met at the UK-Africa Investment Summit in London, where the UK offered support to help Kenya take it forward.
British engineering firm Atkin Global was tapped to design the rail city while KPMG, the global consulting firm, was to lead the hunt for investors into the segments of the project with commercial viability, including office towers, residential homes and multi-storey car parks.
Upon completion, the project was expected to handle about 30,000 passengers in an hour during rush hours and overall handling movements of about 1.5 million Nairobi residents, easing up congestion on the roads.
With Chinese firms bidding for the projects and a new administration under President William Ruto, it remains unclear if the UK and its development arm CDC Group are partnering with Kenya to build the new rail hub.
Fights over the project’s contract started on January 5, 2026, when CCECC and the consortium of CRCEG-COVEC filed separate cases before the PPARB, faulting Kenya Railways for awarding the tender to CRBC despite the mix-up in its tender submissions.
“Counsel submitted that it can be inferred that the proposals were opened simultaneously, occasioning a significant procedural irregularity as it compromised the fairness and objectivity of the technical evaluation by potentially exposing evaluators to the financial information prematurely since the proper procedure ensures that the technical merit is assessed without price bias and promotes a level playing field for all bidders and increases confidence in the procurement process,” PPARB documents state.
In a separate case, the CRCEG-COVEC Consortium said CRBC failed to submit the flash disk containing its financial proposal at the required tender evaluation stage, thus rendering its bid non-responsive.
Kenya Railways defended its award of the tender to CRBC, terming the failure to attach the flash disk with the financial proposal correctly “a minor error”, an argument the PPARB differed with.
“It is evident that a procuring entity cannot waive a mandatory requirement or term it a “minor deviation” since a mandatory requirement is instrumental in determining the responsiveness of a tender and is a first hurdle that a tender must overcome in order to be considered for further evaluation,” the board said.
The PPARB said the committee was supposed to eliminate the Chinese State firm at the technical evaluation stage and should not have proceeded to consider its financial proposal.
