Almost 25 tears of putting out packages for public bid or bidding on public bids have taught me that it is a good concept too often poorly applied. I find three aspects that often get overlooked or abused.
One is as Van mentioned, that of poorly prepared bid packages. Many times this is actually a result of a second layer of the same problems where the design services were also approached and bid in a less than ideal fashion. Low bid designer putting together the package to be bid on by the low bid contractor is often not the best approach to a quality end result.
The second aspect is "
Value Engineering".
Value engineering is supposed to be where the bidders offer suggestions to increase the value without increasing the contract cost or to decrease the contract cost without decreasing the value. It's a great idea and when applied properly can work wonderfully. Unfortunately, it has greatly devolved from the original concept of addressing value to simply addressing cost and it often becomes more a "what can we cut to get the budget down" than it is a matter of improving the value for the money. People also sometimes forget the
value engineering can apply to more than equipment, it can apply to designers and contractors. This sort of segues to...
It is interesting that this was even left out in the posts here but the concept is supposed to be low,
qualified bidder. Three common problems here. The first is who is determining the qualifications. If the party contracting the
system designer does not know how to qualify the designer then that can compound into having a designer that does not know how to qualify the bidders. The second problem is how to qualify or disqualify someone. You can say you want someone with the proper experience and ability but how do you quantify that into something that somebody like a state purchasing agent can work with? You may know someone is not really qualified, but can you
point out a specific qualification that is missing rather than it being something more general? With very few professional (not manufacturer) licenses and certifications in any of the related industries this can sometimes be difficult to do. Finally, even if you do have good qualifiers defined, that doesn't always get enforced, especially when going with a lesser qualified or even unqualified bidder resolves some budget issues. I still remember one state project where the direct end users were very worried about getting a good contractor, so we put together a fairly extensive list of qualifications and information to be submitted with the bid. When it was bid, and being a public bid it was a public bid opening, the apparent low bid turned out to be deficient in a number of the documents and qualifications required. Stupid state purchasing agent stands up and says "since we reserve the right to waive any qualifications, we might overlook the discrepancies." It took hours of work and dealing with calls from attorneys threatening lawsuits in order to finally get the state to
stand by the bid package issued. What is really bad is that I have run into similar situations numerous times.
A related side issue regards the designer's or consultant's
role during construction. The recommended process is for this party to stay involved throughout construction to hep ensure that the design intent is maintained and that the Owner receives what was bid. This approach is applied almost universally for architects, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers,
etc., but quite often it is not applied to specialty systems. Usually a matter of minimizing design service fees, it is not unusual for public projects to end the designer's involvement when they issue the bid package, I have had a number of projects where I had no part in the bidding process or construction. In the past this effort was assumed to be provided by the Owner, a more recent process of third party commissioning relies on a separate party to provide much of this verification. The problem in many specialty areas is that neither the Owner, or at least the people involved, nor the commissioning agent have people qualified in these areas.
So over the years I have found that many techs know what they want, but there can be great value in having someone experienced with how to make that happen involved. The value a good designer/consultant brings is often related as much to the procedural and process aspects of a project, an area where many technically quite competent people have little experience, as it is to the technical aspects.