elpasospeak

Today, Tuesday  January 22, 2013, city council will be considering (ha! when was they last time they did not approve a purchasing item on the agenda?) the approval of two brand new job order contracts (items 11C and 11D).  The city uses these contracts for construction work where they do not want to choose based upon competitive bidding but instead want to cut corners in choosing their favorite contractor.

Each contract is for $1,500,000.   These contracts are different from the ones originating out of Houston that I have been writing about.  They are administered through our own Region 19 Education Service Center.  Evidently the Region 19 cut (% percentage paid by the contractor to Region 19) might stay in El Paso instead of sending our money to Houston.  That would be a good thing.

You remember Region 19  — that is the organization that is supposed to clean up the El Paso Independent School District for us.  The Region 19 web site is far less open than the City of El Paso web site.  If you poke around long enough you can find the results.  They are tucked away under “National Job Order Contracting Services.  Evidently Region 19 wants a piece of the national construction business.  You can read the award summary here: Region19joborder13-6901sum (2)

My problems with this start with the Request For Proposals that Region 19 issued.

• The pricing is based on a percentage of the price published in a price survey, not based upon market conditions today.  The contractor indicates that it will charge X% (lets say 90%) of the price published in the book.
• Evidently 18 contractors responded.  According to the award summary “One proposal received was not in accordance with the scope of Job Order Contracting and was not considered”  In other words they awarded the contract to 17 different firms!
• How can they award a contract to virtually everyone who bid?  Why would they do that?  Maybe because Region 19 will get a cut of anything awarded.  Maybe Region 19 was not looking for competent low cost construction but instead at a revenue stream from other government agencies.  Maybe this was not bidding at all.

Did all 17 firms bid the same prices?

• If they did we have a serious price fixing issue going on here
• If not, how can this be competitive?  Some must be lower than others.  A competitive bid would award the contract to the lowest cost qualified bidder.  Why did 17 out of 18 firms get awarded contracts?

Also interesting is that

• The firm that the city has been issuing these contracts to (most recently $4 million for work on the buildings that the city plans to move into after they have demolished city hall, see Minimal due to condition of building) was awarded one of the contracts by Region 19
• Now that the city has another buy board to use they are not choosing their old firm any more, they are choosing two different firms
• If the original firm was the best choice why are they not being chosen again?  If the city had used real competitive bidding would they have chosen one of these two firms instead of the one that they have been doing business with?  Is this “spread the wealth” instead of choosing the best firm?

I have not been able to look at the responses from the individual firms.  That will have to come later.

In the meantime rest assured that this is just another ruse to avoid doing the real work involved in competitive bidding.

Why does the city even have a purchasing department?  They seem to let city staff chose their favorites anyway.

Now the city can spend another $3 million of our money without telling us what it is for, and they get to pick their contractor to boot.

We deserve better

Brutus

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2013 at 7:35 AM and is filed under City government, El Paso Independent School District, Purchasing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.