Responsible and responsive

"The taxpayer part of me, who hates this entire train scheme, is glad progress is slow and clumsy. However, the former Contract Manager in me is hearing nails on the chalkboard with how this turned out for the four bidding companies. Good flipping grief!"

This posting is going to seem like a bit like inside baseball. Maybe even boring at first. But please stick with me. Yes, there is a point to all this background information I am about to get into. How do I know this stuff? Lived it for years. It was a big part of my craft.

I will address this from a government's position. If there is some outsourcing which needs to be done, and the government does not have the where-with-all nor resources to do it, a solicitation for outside bids is prepared. Normally, for a huge project (like for example, the SWLRT), first an RFI (Request for Information) is sent out. Interested bidders then submit kind of a brag sheet, why they should be considered to bid on this project and prove they are capable of handling the business. Sometimes the government will do some due diligence on bidders they know little about. Why? They need to determine the bidders are responsible. In other words, should they win, they are up to the task to complete the job.

Once responsible bidders are determined, a solicitation called RFP (Request for Proposal) is sent out. Now it is "game on". Proposal teams from all companies bidding now go into hyper drive. The solicitation is gone over with a fine tooth comb. Questions are drawn up on ambiguities or missing parts. There is usually a bidder's conference a week or so after release of the RFP so these questions may be addressed. All bidders usually attend. 

What does all this have to do with anything? Most of us have probably heard that the bids to do the major construction on the SWLRT have come in to the Met Council. Speaking as a former contractor, many dollars (lots of dollars) and many hours go into making up a responsive bid. The bid is gone over with a fine tooth comb to ensure the price could be a winning price and everything in the bid was responsive to the solicitation.

Four bids came to be the major contractor on the Southwest LRT. Then something extraordinary happened. The Met Council threw all four of them out. The new chair of the Met Council said not only were they all non-responsive (highly improbably or impossible to happen), but they were all outside the price window the Met Council had set up. 

As a former contractor who had been down the bidding path many, many times before, this is what went through my mind. This bunch of neophytes who comprise the Met Council, don't have a clue on what they are doing. Because of their inept business practices, they just cost four companies millions of dollars in B+P (bid and proposal) dollars. Shame on the Met Council! And shame on Mark Dayton for appointing this group of know nothings.

The taxpayer part of me, who hates this entire train scheme, is glad progress is slow and clumsy. However, the former Contract Manager in me is hearing nails on the chalkboard with how this turned out for the four bidding companies. Good flipping grief!