On city council’s agenda today we have another example of El Paso businesses being hurt when city staff could do better.
The item is number 10A on the consent agenda. It proposes to award a construction contract for continuing work on Barker Road.
This item was on the agenda in September. The city received five bids. City staff wanted to award the bid to the second lowest bidder. The lowest bidder evidently wanted more for “mobilization” than the city wanted to pay.
Mobilization is a bid item that allows the contractor to be paid early in the contract for costs related to setting up the contract. Normally work is only paid for when completed. Mobilization gives small local contractors a way to afford bidding on work by letting them recoup some of their out of pocket costs (like bonding) earlier. Large contractors often can afford to carry those costs until the project is complete. Without mobilization the smaller contractors might not be able to take on the work.
In the September item the low bidder asked for more than the 5% that the city will allow for mobilization. The situation was somewhat ironic in that the same two first and second place bidders had seen a similar situation where this had come up. In that case the city allowed the bidder with the mobilization cost over 5% to get the business. In the September case city council asked that the project be rebid. In both cases the bidders claimed that the overage was a clerical error.
Contractors are not allowed to make errors whereas the city seems to have a full time department producing Scrivener’s errors.
Of the five bidders being considered in September, two (including the low bidder) decided not to bid again. Many contractors have told me that they don’t bid on city business because of what they perceive to be unfairness.
Since the September bids were made public, bidding again was different. This week’s low bidder at $316,998.76 was September’s high bidder at $401,532.46. The new low bid was just slightly under the September low bid. This contractor obviously read the competitive information and decided to chop almost 25% off his bid.
The city could fix the mobilization problem with better bid language and by moving the mobilization computation down to the bottom of the bid form (sub total, mobilization, grand total) to make it easier for a bidder to check the number.
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
There you go using logic again.
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In my city work, I had to purchase enormous quantities of computer and officer equipment and other items, frequently 6 and 7-figure amounts on a very tight schedule to complete the grant I managed. Anything over $50K had to go to CC that only has these items twice per month on the agenda. So purchasing was a big part of my job and on a very tight schedule.
What I discovered is that the purchasing department is tasked with enforcing a set of rules, laws and guidelines set by CC, e.g., “Buy local” or, “No – buy low price.” It seems to swing over time from one pole to another and they have to read the tea leaves that CC hands to them. Additionally, the purchasing department is understaffed relative to the volume of orders coming from city departments to them. Most of my 3-year experience with them was positive and they bent over backwards to help meet my deadlines.
Not all was perfect though and we did buy non-local for some large items (all paid for by federal dollars). When you are using federal money, the requirement is lowest cost responsive bidder, not “buy local.” How lowest cost responsive bidder is determined does have leeway for subjective judgement, however, A team of us would evaluate the bid documents and individually score each bid on criteria we had previously identified to be relevant, e.g., prior experience, meets specs, meets schedule, etc. The individual scores were averaged and that is how vendors were selected.
Mostly, it worked except one time when I had three bids under $50K for some audio-visual equipment and selected a local vendor we had worked with before, that was also the lowest cost at $49K (i.e., doesn’t have to go to CC). Well, someone in purchasing caught wind of what we were doing and insisted this had to be put put out to a public RFP process. Five months later and, I think, 17 bids received, a low-cost local vendor was selected at $74K, $25K more for the same damn job and a 5 month delay and a vendor with whom we had no prior experience! I was pissed, but purchasing is loath to face questions from CC about why they did one thing rather than another. It is CC that has created a somewhat “hostile” climate to bid out POs and purchasing has to navigate these waters and my $49K (just under the CC wire) was close enough to prompt them to not take the risk at that time. Their call, not mine.
I was glad it wasn’t my job. I had enough problems just getting all that stuff installed before the grant expired and I made every effort to see that vendors had a level playing field. There are departments, I believe, that do play favorites or at least try to keep their familiar vendors in play and are not open to new ideas and techniques from unfamiliar vendors.
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Since the item was rebid every bidder knew the previous bidders unit prices. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to get under the original low bidder. Nothing was wrong with the process. Council had the authority to award to the lowest, second lowest or rebid. They chose to rebid. Done. The big question is why did a law firm pick up the Barker Road bid package the day before the bid? Somebody going to sue somebody?
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