Use of Mandatory Pre-Bid Meetings

Should you ever use a mandatory pre-bid meeting for a public works project? What are the advantages and disadvantages of such a meeting?

Generally speaking, there may be occasions where it is appropriate to use a mandatory pre-bid meeting. For example, you may have a particularly complex project or one where there the access to view the project is restricted or secure. However, use mandatory pre-bid meetings with caution as they can cause unintended consequences.

If you decide to dictate a mandatory pre-bid meeting, make sure you state very clearly in the bidding documents and advertisement the time and place of the meeting. You should also be very clear what the word "mandatory" means: you will not accept bids from bidders who did not attend the meeting. You may also want to consider mentioning in the bidding documents your business reasons for making the meeting mandatory; this could end up being helpful in the event there is a protest related to your acceptance or non-acceptance of a bid.

If possible, try to schedule more than one mandatory meeting in order to give bidders with a scheduling conflict the opportunity to attend. This not only may reduce the possibility of a protest, but may also be beneficial to the bid prices received. If only one bidder shows up to just one mandatory pre-bid meeting, they will then know that they have no competition, and their bid price will not be as competitive. On the other hand, if you have more than one mandatory pre-bid meeting, make sure you communicate the exact same information to the attendees at each meeting, and document the issues raised and addressed through an addendum.

It will be critical to keep an accurate sign-in list of those attending the mandatory pre-bid meeting so that you will know who bids may be accepted from.

To my knowledge, no courts in Washington State have addressed a situation in which a public agency refused to accept the bid of a bidder who didn't attend the mandatory pre-bid meeting, so it is somewhat uncertain how such a case may turn out. Some people may argue that having a mandatory pre-bid meeting restricts the bidding pool in a manner not permitted by public bidding laws. However, if you have valid business reasons for doing so and manage the process appropriately, it may be beneficial to your project to have a mandatory pre-bid meeting.

The decision of whether to have a mandatory pre-bid meeting should be made separately for each project, based on the particular circumstances of the project, and then the process should be managed very carefully.