Washington State Contract with Builders Exchange to Expire in July

For the last dozen years, the Washington State Department of General Administration (GA), now known as the Department of Enterprise Services (DES), has been under contract with Builders Exchange of Washington, Inc. to provide electronic posting of public works bidding documents online.

Contract Expires in July:  The state's contract with Builders Exchange will expire on July 31, 2012 and the state has chosen not to conduct a new competitive selection process for another contract for these services. 

Piggybacking:  Many state and local public agencies have piggybacked off of DES' selection process and contract, and used Builders Exchange as the vehicle to make bidding documents available to contractors and subcontractors.

• Office of State Procurement (OSP):  For the first six years of DES's contracting with Builders Exchange, the Office of State Procurement (OSP) managed the contract, and some members of the state's Purchasing Cooperative Program piggybacked off of OSP's contract. 

• Engineering and Architectural Services Division:  For the last six years, DES' contract has been managed by their Engineering and Architectural Services Division, and some agencies may have entered into an Interlocal Agreement with DES to piggyback off of the Builders Exchange contract.

• No piggybacking:  Other agencies have used Builders Exchange without piggybacking off of any state contract with the assumption that their expenditures were under their competitive bid thresholds for services.

Impact on local agencies:  Because many public agencies have chosen to piggyback off of the state's contract for these services, DES' decision to not conduct a new solicitation process will have an impact on agencies who have relied upon the state's contract. 

Options for bid document distribution:  Without a DES contract that local agencies may piggyback off of, there are five basic options for agencies to provide access to bidding documents:

• Local Agency Website:  An agency could develop its own system and host the documents on its own website.  Some agencies already do this.

• Competitive Selection Process:  An agency could conduct a competitive selection process, consistent with its own contracting requirements, and select a company to provide online access to bidding documents. 

• Piggybacking:  An agency conducting a competitive selection process could make its selection process and contract available to other agencies to use through piggybacking with the use of an Interlocal Agreement.

• Contract Directly without Competition:  Some public agencies may be able to contract directly with Builders Exchange or another provider of these services if the dollar amount of such services is less than any competitive bid limits that may exist under state law for that particular type of agency.  Bid limits are dollar amounts below which public advertising is not required, and these vary widely by type of agency.  Builders Exchange has indicated they intend to reduce their fees to public agencies who continue to use their services.

• Hard Copies:  A public agency may choose to not make bidding documents available electronically, but only provide a hard copy of the documents to contractors and subcontractors, either for free, or upon payment of a refundable or non-refundable deposit.

Policy Issues:  As our society and the construction industry moves more and more toward reliance on electronic documents rather than hard copies, the following policy issues should be considered by public agencies:

• What firms should distribute documents?  There are a number of other companies besides Builders Exchange that provide similar online services.  How should a public agency make the decision about what company should distribute the bidding documents?  If a public agency spends more than its competitive bid threshold to make its bidding documents available online, they will need to conduct a competitive selection process to obtain the services of an online plan center or organization to post the documents online..

• Who should pay to access documents?  In the interest of increasing competition on public works projects, it is beneficial for agencies to have their bidding documents available to a wide array of contractors and subcontractors at little or no cost.  Under some models, a public agency pays for the documents to be posted online, while other models have the contractors and subcontractors pay to access the documents. 

• What system is most convenient for the users?  Agencies should consider issues such as accessibility of the bidding documents to small contractors and the ability of contractors and subcontractors to easily print relevant documents.

Access to DES bidding documents:  DES intends to provide a PDF of its bidding documents to a number of plan centers for electronic access by bidders.  Builders Exchange will be one of the plan centers that DES sends their documents to.  However, because DES does not plan to pay Builders Exchange the per page fee (or pay a fee to any of the plan centers), DES' bidding documents will only be made available by Builders Exchange and other plan centers to paying contractor members of those plan centers, and will not be accessible by contractors or the general public who are not paying members.  

Mike Purdy's Public Contracting Blog 

© 2012 by Michael E. Purdy Associates, LLC 

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