questionable practices
tommyLet’s say you work for the county. Your department needs some services done by an outside contractor, but you can’t just go out and hire someone. You tell the purchasing department what you need, and they create an RFP, or Request For Proposal. Purchasing then goes through the RFP’s to determine which vendor gets the work. Depending on the need, RFP’s are scored in different ways. In some cases such as street sweeping, the only scoring is price – who can do the job the cheapest? In other cases, such as custom software needs, price is only 30% of the scoring. Knowledge and ability to do the job are also scored. It’s in these subjective qualifications that the best vendor can be chosen. But looked at another way, it’s in these subjective qualifications that friends of county officials can win the job and cost taxpayers more money.
But it’s not just scoring that can affect the cost. Similar needs can be combined into one RFP to eliminate smaller businesses from even applying. For instance, let’s say a new park is needed. A fencing company can put up a chain link, and a paving company can put in a trail. But if the RFP calls for both, only those vendors with experience in BOTH will win the job, possibly at a higher price.
Last September, Hillsborough County issued RFP S-268-04(JH) for 258 convenience copiers AND central copying services. Any copy machine manufacturer can send 258 machines for a base price. Kinko’s (for instance) can staff a copy center. But the county combined them.
In this particular RFP, scoring is as follows: 25 points for understanding the scope and objectives of the desired product/service, 15 points for organization/vendor qualification, and 60 points for the lowest bid. An additional five bonus points are awarded for special incentives (women or minority owned businesses for example).
The top ranked vendor (IKON Office Solutions) got all 25 points for understanding, all 15 points for qualification and their total price is $5.67 million. The second ranked vendor (Savin Corporation d/b/a RICOH Business Systems) priced the work at $5.00 million, but only scored a 13 for understanding the scope, and a 13 for qualification. Awarding the job to IKON will cost Hillsborough County taxpayers an additional $670,000. Here are the scores.
Now, I have no idea who scores the “understanding” portion of the RFP, and it could certainly be accurate. But I find it difficult to believe that any vendor would comprehend only barely more than half (13/25) of the work plan. Either Savin/RICOH is completely incompetent or the scoring is skewed.
Furthermore, it seems that both IKON and Savin/RICOH offered RICOH brand copiers for the convenience copy machines portion. IKON’s proposal, however offered a lesser model (90 copies per minute) than Savin/RICOH (105 copies per minute).
So the leading vendor uses cheaper copy machines but costs 13% (over half a million dollars!!) more than the runner-up. Care to guess how this will play out?
Loading ...
