City's bid process draws a challenge

The city's bid review committee made their final recommendation Thursday on the competitive bid for the $250,000 Hood Avenue/Fir Street water-line project. The winning bid came from Robinson & Owen Heavy Construction of Sisters at $253,702. The lowest bid was from Bartels Construction of Powell Butte at $229,732, roughly $24,000 lower.

The city has a point system for bidding that includes other criteria than bid price, which can mean that a higher bid can win a contract. Last year the city council adopted Ordinance 405, designed to make the city's competitive bid process more responsive to those bidders with local ties and with investment in the Sisters community. Councilor Pat Thompson championed this new approach.

This is the third time the city has used this new bid process since its inception. In each of the previous bids, the bidder with the highest point total was also the low bidder.

Gary Tewalt told The Nugget that a bulk of the Bartels work would have been subcontracted to Tewalt and Sons of Sisters. Bartels has appealed the bid decision and has mentioned a lawsuit if the appeal is not successful.

Director of Public Works Paul Bertagna said that the Robinson & Owen bid was very detailed and included several options from which the city could choose.

"The quality of the proposal from Bartels did not weight high enough to put them in first place," said Bertagna.

In discussing the difference in the bids, Tewalt referred to the Robinson & Owen bid as a "$24,000 essay." Tewalt indicated that he would expect Robinson & Owen to sue if the project was rebid or if the award changed.

Tewalt reported that the Bartels bid consisted of one-line answers for each of the bid questions, which was consistent with how Bartels had successfully bid city jobs in the past.

There were five members of the bid review committee. Bertagna; Andy Duran, maintenance supervisor; the design engineer and former city engineer Richard Nored; and new city council member and former Sprint executive, Catherine Childress.

At the beginning of the bid review, each member scores the bids independently on a 100-point scale. Thirty points are awarded to the low bidder, and the balance of the bids are awarded proportionally fewer points based on their distance from the low bid.

For this bid, the balance of 70 points was scored with up to 20 points for the work management plan, 20 points for the business communication plan, 20 points for use of local resources, 20 points for community involvement, and 10 points for qualifications and experience. The bidders have to be prequalified before they can even bid the job, hence the lower value for qualifications.

In the workshop Mayor Brad Boyd asked, "This is what came out of this (ordinance 405) bid process?"

Bertagna answered, "Yes."

Councilor Womack asked, "Are you comfortable with number-one?"

Bertagna replied, "Yes."

The seven-day appeals process began last Wednesday. If there are no successful appeals the council will vote on the project award at their March 28 meeting.

An indication that this process might need some refinement is the fact that if for any reason Robinson & Owen pulled out or otherwise was no longer qualified to bid, the number-two bid

would win.

The number-two bid, and the best overall proposal (per Bertagna) came from Jack Robinson and Sons Inc. of Bend at $297,222, more than $67,000 higher than the lowest bid.