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The High Court has dismissed a challenge by a Chinese firm seeking to overturn its disqualification from a tender.

World Standardisation Certification and Testing Group (Shenzhen) Company Limited was barred from a multi-year tender to provide pre-export verification services for goods destined for Kenya.

The dispute arose from Tender No KEBS/PRE-Q/T006/2025/2028, which sought to prequalify firms for the Provision of Pre-Export Verification of Conformity to Standards Services for the years 2025 to 2028.

While the Shenzhen-based applicant was initially informed its bid for 'Zone 1 China' was responsive, it was later disqualified during due diligence. The Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs) cited a breach of a previous contract—and which was the subject of another court case—as the reason for the exclusion.

In its petition, the company argued that the evaluation committee, whose members were drawn from Kebs staff, could not fairly consider allegations made by the same procuring entity.

The applicant accused the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board of failing to uphold the doctrines that no one should be a judge in their own cause, which allowed Kebs staff to preside over a complaint raised by Kebs itself. “It [the applicant] argues that further, the criterion of past performance was not applied to other bidders during due diligence,”court documents show.

“The applicant is aggrieved since, the board still went ahead to affirm the evaluation committee’s decision to make a conclusion on the basis of an undetermined case at the High Court, as well as to sit on a matter where the committee was technically-speaking, the complainant and the judge at the same time.”

The company sought orders to have the board’s decision of February 17 quashed, to compel its pre-qualification and prohibition to stop any contract awards.

The respondent, the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board, maintained it acted within its mandate. It argued that a fresh due diligence exercise had been conducted as previously ordered and that the applicant had been afforded a fair hearing to respond to the adverse findings. Kebs agreed with the board, pointing out that the evaluation committee was a statutory body properly constituted under Section 46(1) of the Public Procurement and Asset Disposal Act, which requires committee members to be drawn from the procuring entity’s staff.

Justice John Chigiti ruled the firm had failed to prove its case against the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board and Kebs.

The court also rejected the claim that no fresh due diligence had been conducted, noting that the applicant’s own letter of January 15, responding to the evaluation committee’s invitation demonstrated active participation in the process.

“Having accepted the remedy, the applicant cannot at this hour challenge the composition of the same committee it embraced and subjected itself to just because it lost before it,” the judge ruled.

The judge also noted that the mere overlap of roles in a statutory body does not, on its own, constitute bias.