Mike Purdy's Public Contracting Blog

Mike - This was an eye opener for us school distri...

2012-05-24T08:36:02.314-07:00

Mike -
This was an eye opener for us school districts at the recent WASBO annual conference. A lot (most?) school districts piggyback onto state contracts. With districts riding on a different set of RCW's and bid requirements, we are concerned we may not be abot to utilized State contracts, so we are waiting for the other shoe to drop. We are betting they do not want to "loose" us customers if their new bid requirements will not meet ours. Some have suggested for us to wait on renewing with DES/GA until all of this has been worked out.

- Darryl Reed
Shoreline School Dist.

Democrats pushed it as a job creation bill, while ...

2012-05-05T15:57:52.957-07:00

Democrats pushed it as a job creation bill, while Republicans viewed it as costly and an intrusion of government into business.

What was the reasoning behind defeating the bill?

2012-04-30T08:22:02.128-07:00

What was the reasoning behind defeating the bill?

Thank you! Just what I was thinking as I reveiwed ...

2012-04-13T13:21:19.886-07:00

Thank you! Just what I was thinking as I reveiwed the language in one of our bid documents. I was thinking perhaps a formality could be waived, but an informality??? Nonsense! Googled "waive any and all informalities meaning" which led me to your recommendation. Thanks again for pointing out this common yet meaningless phrasing.

Gotta love New Orleans. I think it will be very i...

2012-03-27T11:24:37.298-07:00

Gotta love New Orleans. I think it will be very interesting to see how this plays out. My guess is that it just spirals away into oblivion. Seems strange to require contractors to report when they violate the law...why don't they just not violate the law? :)

The elimination of prevailing wages, in and of its...

2012-01-21T07:29:45.668-08:00

The elimination of prevailing wages, in and of itself, probably wouldn't be the impetus for shifting to RFPs rather than bids. I think public agencies are always looking for tools to ensure qualified contractors - whether that's pre-qualification, responsibility criteria, or selection based on an RFP.

I agree that the sentence about no one being paid a prevailing wage is unnecessary. By definition, if the law passes, there will be no prevailing wages. How can they prohibit a contractor from paying something that doesn't exist?

I find this fascinating. Will this make agencies ...

2012-01-20T13:55:33.808-08:00

I find this fascinating. Will this make agencies move towards RFPs rather than bids to assure competent workforces? Why is the last paragraph needed - if they get rid of the state prevailing wage requirements, why do they need the sentence that says no one will be paid a prevailing wage on non-federal contracts?

I disagree. They do it all the time in government ...

2011-12-29T08:48:17.132-08:00

I disagree. They do it all the time in government contracts. The contracts are often silent in this regard and the contractors propose a "dream team" only to switched after contract award.

Merry Christmas Mike - and thanks for your blog. ...

2011-12-15T13:32:59.438-08:00

Merry Christmas Mike - and thanks for your blog. I know I speak for many when I say your writings are read, quoted, passed on, copy and pasted, and sometimes archived! You probably don't get as much feedback as you should, so I'd like to take this time to thank you on behalf of the many readers that really appreciate the work you do.

Thanks for your posts Mike; Great list of actual i...

2011-12-13T05:52:28.892-08:00

Thanks for your posts Mike;
Great list of actual issues that regularly occur. I sat through a full day seminar with the
Department of Transportation a few months ago. They spend an entire section of the seminar on exactly the same subject.

Claims of error as well as omission of a price are the 2 largest reason they state bids become problems and/or are disqualified or, the vendors take a bath.

We actually in the past year have had a national billion dollar company lose a bid for the price omission reason. Nobody really cried about that except the person who prepared the RFP for the company.
http://www.alphagray.com

Happy early Thanksgiving to you sir!

2011-11-21T09:29:29.131-08:00

Happy early Thanksgiving to you sir!

In my opinion the owner should be responsible for ...

2011-11-18T02:56:08.141-08:00

In my opinion the owner should be responsible for the risk and take full responsibility for the project. Whoever pays needs to be responsible. In addition, the purchasing department should be held accountable when something goes wrong. No more of this getting everything commoditized, handing over to the engineers and operational folks and saying: make it work. The finger of blame always gets pointed at the engineering staff and technical people at the owner and contractor's offices, but it should be pointing squarely at the purchasing department and their tendering/bidding process. They should take the heat when things go wrong.

This is both a good news and having doubts about t...

2011-10-06T03:49:29.885-07:00

This is both a good news and having doubts about the system. First, technology nowadays makes our work much more easier --which is great and I don't have any problems with that. Although I hope they reviewed the software for any bugs or etc.

Interesting approach to transparency. I would like...

2011-09-14T09:35:02.797-07:00

Interesting approach to transparency. I would like to see what percentage of protests actually resulted in changing the award outcome and, what the main reason for the protest was. In my experience I have seen a very small percent of challenges result in a change. The ones which did usually were based on fraudulent information or misrepresentations by the procurement officer or, the winning bidder.

Bidders should be seeking out this info on every b...

2011-09-13T07:18:28.850-07:00

Bidders should be seeking out this info on every bid. If every bidder called in to get these details you'd see letters go out consistently.

Fantastic to hear this Mike. Not that fraud may ha...

2011-09-12T12:49:46.098-07:00

Fantastic to hear this Mike. Not that fraud may have been committed but there actually may be some enforcement and consequences. A strong message must be sent to companies who knowingly defraud our Set Asides system out of BILLIONS of dollars each year. I hope this company and, people involved get jail time and restitution of every dollars stolen through fraud.

Good point, Dennis. Thanks for your comment that ...

2011-09-09T05:22:04.717-07:00

Good point, Dennis. Thanks for your comment that the single point of contact must be available, and watch the size of their voice mail and e-mail in boxes.

Mike, if a single point of contact is designated, ...

2011-09-09T04:23:17.734-07:00

Mike, if a single point of contact is designated, that single point of contact has to be available and responsive. I've been involved with Federal contracts where the official single point of contact had a full voicemail box that one could never add messages to -- you had to know the "secret" phone number in order to leave a message or get a response.

Dennis McDonald
Alexandria, Virginia
http://www.ddmcd.com

Mike, I certainly enjoyed reading your blog about ...

2011-09-08T18:57:56.237-07:00

Mike,
I certainly enjoyed reading your blog about prevailing wage projects and your four tracking tools. You and I are in agreement on this subject and as a result I am a new subscriber to your blog.
Most of our clients have smaller projects under $1M and some of them do a good job of maintaining job logs and documenting the activities on their job sites; others need a bit of encouragement.
Perhaps if I share some of your blog posts it may help because you write from the perspective of larger contractors who have similar issues and a lot more at risk.

Warm Regards,
Randal DeHart
www.fasteasyaccounting.com

In Washington State, for a public works project wi...

2011-09-06T05:59:14.376-07:00

In Washington State, for a public works project without federal funding, there are no state requirements for sole proprietors to submit weekly certified payrolls, unless you have a particular state funding source that may require it, perhaps due to the fact that their money originally was federal money. Please contact me directly if you'd like to discuss this issue further. I'm interested in what state agencies have told you.

Do sole proprietors have to submit weekly certifie...

2011-09-01T07:40:16.156-07:00

Do sole proprietors have to submit weekly certified payrolls? I have received varying answers to this question from state agencies depending on who I talk to.

Thank you for that information Mike. I never reall...

2011-09-01T07:21:31.008-07:00

Thank you for that information Mike. I never really gave the exception much thought as I always had worked with larger firms and their staff. I am now representing several small businesses who have only themselves or, an equal partner in the business. This is especially true of many of the consultants I now work with. I will check my state rules here in Arizona. This was an eye opener for me today. Thank you.
Fred Siegel

Thanks for the re-post Mike!

2011-08-29T07:31:22.797-07:00

Thanks for the re-post Mike!

Yes, I think you're right about the preconstru...

2011-08-27T09:07:47.152-07:00

Yes, I think you're right about the preconstruction contract being exempt from sales tax if the construction contract under Rule 171 is exempt from sales tax.

So applying the same rule, where the construction ...

2011-08-23T10:54:27.819-07:00

So applying the same rule, where the construction contract is exempt from sales tax per Rule 171, the precon contract would aslo be exempt.