Ground transportation RFP for Pakistan: what to put in the tender

A ground transportation RFP for Pakistan should do six things: fix the geography (which cities, which airports, which intercity lanes), define vehicle classes by minimum standard rather than brand, set service levels you can actually measure, force every bidder into one pricing schedule, publish the scoring weights before bids arrive, and, if you are a public body, follow the Public Procurement Rules rather than a private-sector template. Most RFP templates in circulation were written for markets with licensed limousine operators and a single metro area. Pakistan is different. Supply ranges from owner-drivers with one car to fleet operators and aggregators, tax on services is collected by the provinces, and the security picture changes sharply between districts. A tender that ignores those three facts will attract bids that cannot be compared and a contract that cannot be enforced.

What follows is a working structure: what to put in each section, the questions suppliers must answer, and how to score them.

Decision summary: what kind of ground transportation RFP you are writing

Before drafting, decide which of three procurements you are running. The documents look similar; the evaluation does not.

If you are buying all three, split them into lots. A supplier excellent at 5 a.m. arrivals at Islamabad International may be the wrong choice to move 300 wedding guests in one afternoon.

Scope: cities, airports and intercity lanes

Vague scope is the biggest single cause of unusable bids. “Nationwide coverage” invites every bidder to say yes. Name the places.

Airports

List each airport you expect to use and the expected share of volume. The three primary international gateways are Islamabad International (ISB), Jinnah International in Karachi (KHI) and Allama Iqbal International in Lahore (LHE). Secondary international airports include Peshawar (PEW), Multan (MUX), Faisalabad (LYP), Sialkot (SKT) and Quetta (UET). Flag Sialkot separately: it is privately owned by the Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Ask bidders to describe, airport by airport, where drivers wait, how they meet passengers and how they handle delayed or diverted flights.

Cities

Split cities into tiers. Tier one might be Islamabad/Rawalpindi, Lahore and Karachi, where you expect daily bookings. Tier two might be Faisalabad, Multan, Sialkot and Hyderabad, where bookings are weekly. Tier three is everything else, on request. Ask bidders to state for each tier whether they have their own vehicles based there, contracted partners, or neither. That one question separates real coverage from a phone number.

Intercity lanes

Intercity work in Pakistan runs largely on the motorway network, which the National Highway Authority owns and operates and the National Highways & Motorway Police patrol. Name lanes by corridor so bidders price like for like, for example:

• M-2 Islamabad to Lahore (roughly 375 km of motorway)
• M-1 Islamabad to Peshawar (about 155 km)
• M-11 Lahore to Sialkot (about 89 km)
• M-9 Karachi to Hyderabad (about 136 km)
• M-4 Pindi Bhattian to Multan and M-5 Multan to Sukkur for southern Punjab and upper Sindh

State whether prices must include motorway tolls, and whether a one-way trip is billed with the empty return leg or without it. Bidders answer that question differently if you leave it open, and the difference is large on a 375 km lane.

Security-restricted areas belong in the scope section, not an appendix

If your travellers are British nationals, or your insurer follows UK government advice, read the FCDO travel advice for Pakistan before you finalise the lane list. At the time of writing, the FCDO advises against all travel to Balochistan, to Peshawar city and a long list of other Khyber Pakhtunkhwa districts, to within 10 miles of the Afghan border and of the Line of Control, and to the Karakoram Highway between Mansehra and Chilas. It advises against all but essential travel to Sindh north of and including Nawabshah, which puts Sukkur, the southern end of the M-5, in that category, as well as to Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Dera Ghazi Khan and several further KP districts. The same page warns that travel insurance may be invalidated by travel against that advice.

So list lanes such as Islamabad to Peshawar, or anything into Quetta, as “exception routes” needing written approval from your travel-risk function. Ask bidders whether they operate there at all; a “no” is useful information. And because the advice changes, reference the live FCDO page in the contract rather than copying today’s list.

Vehicle classes and minimum standards

Specify a class and a floor, not a model. “Toyota Corolla or similar” is ambiguous in a market where the same badge covers vehicles a decade apart. Instead, define each class by seats, luggage capacity, maximum age, air-conditioning and body type, then let bidders name the models they will actually supply.

The iDrive vehicle classes page shows how one managed network groups the local fleet, from economy hatches through VIP SUVs to minibuses and coaches for parties of up to 45, which is a useful reference when you draft your own class definitions.

Driver standards

Pakistani licences come in categories. A private motorcar licence is, as the category itself states, not valid for commercial transport; commercial cars and minibuses fall under the Light Transport Vehicle (LTV) category, buses under Heavy Transport Vehicle (HTV), and there is a separate Public Service Vehicle (PSV) category. Licences are issued at district and provincial level, and the minimum age for paid drivers is 20 rather than 18, according to the summary of Pakistani licence categories. Your tender should require bidders to state which licence category each driver holds for the class they drive, and to produce copies on request.

Beyond licensing, ask for:

• How drivers are identity-checked (CNIC verification) and how often the check is repeated
• Whether drivers are employees, contracted owner-drivers, or partner-fleet staff
• Languages spoken, and the driving-hours limit enforced on long intercity days

For vehicles, ask for registration documents, insurance cover (passengers, third party, vehicle) and a replacement commitment: if the booked car fails, how quickly a same-class substitute arrives, and at whose cost.

Service levels and response times

Service levels only work if you can measure them from the supplier’s own records. Define each one precisely and ask bidders to state the target they will commit to, rather than dictating a number they will simply agree to on paper.

1. Booking confirmation time. The interval between your request and a confirmed vehicle and driver name. Split by notice period: advance bookings, same-day bookings, and requests with under two hours’ notice.
2. On-time arrival. Define “on time” (for example, the driver at the pickup point at or before the booked time) and how it is evidenced, such as GPS logs or app timestamps.
3. Airport waiting. How flight tracking works, how long the driver waits after landing at no extra charge, and when waiting time starts to be billed.
4. Driver details in advance. When the traveller receives the driver’s name, phone number and vehicle registration.
5. Escalation. A named 24-hour contact, the time to answer an escalation call, and the time to dispatch a replacement vehicle in each city tier.
6. Reporting. Incident reports after any accident or missed pickup, plus a monthly report on trips, spend and on-time performance.

Tie a small number of these, typically on-time arrival and escalation response, to service credits. Tying all of them creates paperwork without improving the service.

Pricing schedule format

The pricing schedule is where transport tenders in Pakistan usually fall apart. One bidder quotes per kilometre, another per trip, a third per day with fuel “at actuals”. The fix is to issue a mandatory template and reject any bid that does not use it.

Build the schedule as a grid

Rows are trip types; columns are vehicle classes. A workable set of rows:

• Airport transfer, per airport, each direction
• City transfer, point to point within a defined zone
• Half-day and full-day car with driver, stating the hours and kilometres included
• Intercity one-way, per named lane
• Intercity with overnight stay, including the driver’s allowance and accommodation arrangement
• Additional hour, additional kilometre, waiting time and late-night surcharge

State what the price must include

Specify whether prices include fuel, tolls, parking, airport entry charges, the driver’s meals and overnight costs, and provincial sales tax on services. Ask bidders to show tax as a separate line. Fuel is the cost a bidder is least able to predict over a multi-year term, so decide in advance whether you want fixed rates for the contract term or a fuel-indexation clause with a published reference and a trigger threshold. Either is defensible; leaving it undefined is not.

Use a basket to compare bids

Rate cards are hard to compare line by line. Build a hypothetical monthly basket from your own travel data, for example (illustration only) 40 airport transfers in Islamabad, 20 in Karachi, 10 full-day cars in Lahore and 4 Islamabad to Lahore one-way trips, and multiply each bidder’s rates through it. The basket total becomes the price score. Publish the basket composition in the tender so bidders understand how they will be judged; do not publish your budget.

Tax and supplier registration: the provincial detail most templates miss

Since the 18th Amendment, sales tax on services has been a provincial matter, while the federal government taxes goods. In practice that means four collecting bodies: the Punjab Revenue Authority, the Sindh Revenue Board, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Revenue Authority and the Balochistan Revenue Authority, alongside the Federal Board of Revenue for income tax (see the overview of taxation in Pakistan). A supplier running trips in Lahore and Karachi may therefore have registration questions in two provinces.

Your tender should not try to settle the tax law; your adviser should. It should make bidders disclose:

• National Tax Number and whether the entity appears on the FBR Active Taxpayers List for income tax
• Provincial sales-tax-on-services registration for each province where they will invoice, for example with the Punjab Revenue Authority
• Whether quoted prices are inclusive or exclusive of provincial tax, and at what rate they have assumed
• Whether invoices will be issued by the bidder itself or by partner fleets, which matters for your withholding and input-tax treatment

If a bidder works through owner-drivers or partner fleets, that is not a problem in itself, but it does mean you should know which legal entity invoices you, which one employs the driver, and which one carries the insurance. Put all three in the contract.

Transport tender evaluation criteria and weighting

Publish the criteria, the weights and the pass marks in the tender document itself. It keeps bids focused and makes the award defensible. A starting point for an executive and airport programme:

These weights are an example, not a standard. An event procurement would push capacity and operations planning higher; a cost-driven staff shuttle would push price higher. Two rules hold regardless. Set a minimum technical score that a bid must pass before price is opened, and score price by formula so nobody can argue about it later.

Verify, do not just read

Written answers are easy to polish. Add a reference call, a dispatch-office visit or a vehicle inspection, and score what you find.

PPRA considerations for public-sector buyers

Federal ministries, departments and state-owned bodies do not have the freedom of a private buyer. The Public Procurement Regulatory Authority, set up under an ordinance in 2002, prescribes the regulations for procurement by federal public sector organisations; provincial agencies work under their own provincial procurement regimes, so confirm which one binds you before drafting. For federal buyers, the Public Procurement Rules 2004 as published by PPRA shape the tender in several concrete ways:

• Advertising (Rule 12). Procurements above Rs 500,000 and up to Rs 3 million must be advertised on the Authority’s website; above Rs 3 million, on the website and in English and Urdu newspapers.
• Response time (Rule 13). At least 15 days for national competitive bidding and 30 days for international, from publication.
• Evaluation criteria (Rule 29). The agency must set out an evaluation criterion listing all the relevant information against which a bid is evaluated. The weighting table above belongs in the bidding document, not in an internal memo.
• No changes after opening (Rule 31). Bidders cannot alter their bids once opened, which is another reason to make the pricing template mandatory.
• Procedure (Rule 36). Single stage two envelope, where the technical envelope is evaluated before the financial one is opened, suits a service contract where quality thresholds matter.
• Award (Rule 38). The rules as currently published refer to the bidder with the most advantageous bid, which supports a quality-and-cost evaluation rather than lowest price alone.
• Securities (Rules 25 and 39). Bid security may not exceed 5% of the estimated value, and a performance guarantee may not exceed 10% of the contract amount.

Federal tenders are listed and submitted through PPRA’s electronic system, e-PADS (e-Pak Acquisition and Disposal System), which has separate portals for procuring agencies and vendors, so check early that the suppliers you want can register there. Thresholds and procedures are amended from time to time, so rely on the current text on the PPRA site, not on a copy saved in a previous tender file.

RFP questions for chauffeur services: the list suppliers must answer

Put these in the response form as numbered questions with word limits. Free-form capability statements are where weak bids hide.

Operations

1. For each named city and airport, how many vehicles of each class do you control directly, and how many through partners?
2. Describe your dispatch set-up: hours staffed, systems used, and how a booking made at 11 p.m. for a 4 a.m. pickup is handled.
3. How do you track inbound flights, and what happens when a flight is delayed by three hours or diverted to another airport?
4. What is your process when a driver does not arrive? Who calls the traveller, and within what time?

People and safety

5. What checks do you run on drivers before their first job, and how often are they repeated?
6. Which licence category does each driver hold for the vehicle class they will drive?
7. What is your policy on driving hours, rest breaks and overnight stays on intercity work?
8. How do you assess route risk, and which areas will you not serve?
9. Describe your accident and breakdown procedure, including insurance claims.

Commercial and data

10. Which legal entity will contract, invoice and insure? Provide NTN and provincial registrations.
11. Complete the mandatory pricing schedule. List every surcharge not shown there; anything unlisted will not be payable.
12. Give two corporate references we may contact, with the scope of work you deliver for each.

Where iDrive fits in a tender

iDrive runs a managed network rather than a single fleet, so it can respond to a multi-city scope with one account, one pricing structure and one escalation line, while the vehicles on each lane come from the partner operators and drivers on its network. The business travel car service page sets out the corporate offer; the airport transfers in Pakistan and city-to-city taxi pages cover the two trip types that make up most tender baskets. For trips booked by individual travellers or their families outside the corporate account, our sister service Pakistan Taxi publishes a practical guide to planning transport for several business meetings in one day.

Any quote iDrive provides against your schedule is subject to confirmation of vehicle availability for the dates and lanes in question. If you are drafting a ground transportation RFP now and want a response to it, send the document or your draft scope through the iDrive contact page.

Questions people ask

How is a corporate transportation RFP different from a request for quotation?

A corporate transportation RFP asks suppliers to explain how they will deliver the service and scores quality as well as price. A request for quotation asks for prices against a fixed specification. For a recurring, multi-city programme, the RFP is the better tool; an RFQ suits a one-off event with a simple scope.

Should price be the deciding factor in a transport services tender in Pakistan?

Rarely on its own. Set a minimum technical pass mark, then score price by formula on a published basket. Federal public bodies should note that the Public Procurement Rules as currently published refer to the most advantageous bid, which accommodates quality-and-cost evaluation.

How should a tender treat areas under FCDO travel warnings?

List them as exception routes requiring internal approval, ask bidders whether and how they operate there, and reference the live FCDO advice in the contract instead of copying a fixed list.