Brutus’ post Foul Ballpark has me wondering why we put up with this stuff at the city.
Would you:
- Decide to build a new home
- Sign a contract to have the house built for $150,000
- Have the plans drawn up later
- Give the builder 30% of what is left if the house ends up costing less than $150,000
- Let your real estate agent decide how the home will be built?
Of course not! You would:
- Have detailed plans before you signed the contract
- Keep control over the design, not let someone else decide for you
- Make sure that the contractor built what was promised, not delete a bathroom or leave the roof off …
- Walk away from any contractor that proposed such nonsense
It appears that this is what the city wants to do to us at their Tuesday meeting. The El Paso Times article this weekend did not point this out. I hope they write an editorial about this.
Why do we allow the people at the city to do this to us?
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
elpasospeak 
Contrary to what your intuition may tell you, design/build is probably the surest way that a quality project gets built on time and in the budget. City, builder and architect all have the same interest.
If I were king of El Paso that is the delivery method I would use with such a short schedule.
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Design/Built would work nicely, but i think Construction Management at Risk works too. But come to think, I don’t seem to recall any Request for Qualifications for CMR from the city. I could be a Design/Built project from the very start. Again, no transparency from our city “Leaders”. 😦
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I found this document on the city website.
It appears that either the “fix was in” or the bidders had clearly different qualifications:
http://www.elpasotexas.gov/purchasing/docs/RANKING%20SHEET.pdf#view=fitH
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I would have to disagree with your comments. As an architect, the concept described here is called Construction Management at Risk (CMR) but it can also be Construction Management Agent (CMA), but what I see here is CMR. Both are very different. What is happening here is that an owner, in this case, the City of El Paso has a project and a fixed budget for construction. The Owner hires an architect to start looking at a design(s), to look at problems areas, size (seating cap.), shape (baseball standards), types of construction (concrete, steel, etc.), and look of the project and so on. This is called Schematic Design or Preliminary Design. Once a “design(s)” is/are picked, the architect develops the design(s) more fully looking at code issues, looking to solve the problem areas with more design work, trying to figure out the best design(s) that work best. At this point, the Owner would do a Request for Qualifications for CMR. CMR in a nut shell is a Contractor that manages the construction just like a regular contractor but promises the Owner that they can construct the project for the bid price and not go over. In this case in your example, $150,000.00. That means if the project goes over the $150,000.00 and if it costs the contractor $160,000.00 to construct, the contractor pays the difference and not the Owner, this is the Risk part of CMR. In CMA, the contractor is only a manager. Their job is to manage the project only, the Owner is the Contractor and hires contractors (not sub-contractors) with the help of the manger to do the work and if it costs more the Owners pays for any and all the differences in cost (there is a fee involved). In both cases, CMR an CMA, before the architect starts with the finial Construction Documents, the Owner, Architect and the CMR meet together to make sure that project can be built for that price. Things are added and deleted; this is why City Council has the city engineer have control over the design. That does not mean they have no input, all it means is that city engineer is the Owners representative in making decisions ($$$$) in what gets added or deleted, that is in the best interest for the City. You need to remember that at this stage the plans are not complete and All parties understand this. I can go on with all it entails, but this is just a small sample and over simplification of the process. I am here to tell you that this project has been in works for some time now. The first two phases has long been going on (NO A FEW MONTHS OF DESIGN, more like an year at best). This was no simple deal and this is what I hate about this whole process. Too many secrets and behind close door deals without transparency.
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This means that the plans were started over a year ago before the City council apporved it and the Pro BB team was available. Were all the City Representatives aware of the plans? Did they select the Builder and the Architect?
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At least the preliminary design(s) may have started at the most a year ago looking what was presented and judging by the graphics and what was said about the planning of the site(s) and the surroundings in the news reports, maybe as soon as 6 months ago. My best judgment, the selection of an architect was done by mountain star not the city. If this was a design/built project, then yes to both the architect and the contractor, but reading in the EPT, its states the contractor to be a Construction Manager at Risk.
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Thank you for your thoughts. Yes, this is complicated. It appears to be another deal where the city made up it’s mind who to use before it went through the “formality” of seeking other contractors.
The document proposed is titled “Standard Form of Agreement Between Owner and Construction Manager as Constructor where the basis of payment is the Cost of the Work Plus a Fee with a Guaranteed Maximum Price”.
It appears that the contractor is guaranteed a fee up to whatever the final negotiated price is. If the contractor can then deliver the project for less money the contractor evidently gets 30% of the savings. The city engineer evidently can modify the scope of the project as long as the modifications do not increase the price. If the city engineer decided that we could get by with fewer seats that would probably lower the cost.
One of my concerns here is that city staff is asking for the authority to change the design without any input from city council.
It is interesting that section 2.2.1 of the agreement sets April 5, 2013 as the date where the construction manager must have set the guaranteed maximum price proposal. Evidently there is still negotiating that will go on relative to the price.
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That’s the way it works. The contractor must get his sub-contractors on board the have their numbers firm before signing the contract. The city engineer (with the architect and mountain star) will have to present the project to city council. In some of my dealing with the City, there is at time a rep at the meetings to put their 2 cents in. By the April 5th date, the finial plans should be around 70 to 80 percent done if not 90 percent if lucky.
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Cato — Take a few minutes to visit the websites of some of the other firms and you’ll see a couple in particular with stellar credentials. That little exercise will strengthen your suspicions of a “fix”. There were a couple of world-class firms in the race and not a single rater went against Jordan. Interesting, how that works — everyone being in lock-step. Just proves once again that the local ruling class makes the rules and stacks the deck. Local leaders are all for keeping the money local, when it’s one of their own or one of their benefactors getting the gold. We deserve better.
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Sorry to say but this happens a lot. Some times they just go through the motions to make things seem legal and other times are to use “good old boys” only. I can’t prove it but I know it does happen or at least it looks like it does. I don’t know how many times my proposals went out the window by this type of “bidding”.
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