8 ms·

Yup. 2 anecdotes from a 3-year stint in town government: 1) Built a new town hall because they were double-desking at the old one. Lowest bid wins, realisti

by jbooth 14y ago

Yup. 2 anecdotes from a 3-year stint in town government: 1) Built a new town hall because they were double-desking at the old one. Lowest bid wins, realistic and competent bids lose. They lay the sidewalk outside while it's below freezing out. Official in town who's managing the project shows up, "What the hell are you doing! You can't lay concrete while it's freezing." "This is the only way we can do it on the budget, sue us if you don't like it." Cracked, shitty sidewalk, would be cheaper to rebuild it than sue. Shitty sidewalk persists. Built a school, too. Lowest bid. HVAC system is so noisy that several classrooms are unusable, and the floors are all fucked up through half the school. $1.5 million in legal fees later, we settle for $500k in damages, not enough money to fix the defects.

larrys 14y ago
"Lowest bid wins, realistic and competent bids lose." But what would the best practice be to determine that the realistic and competent bids are objectively evaluated? How do you solve that problem in the real world (and not even talking about any other conflicts or issues)? Employ consultants or? My anecdote would relate to government bidding for some mfg. projects. It was very clear that the people evaluating the bids (at least in the small area I was involved with) took into account the reputation of the bidder in awarding the contracts.
- jbooth 14y ago
  It's hard. Usually it's well-intentioned taxpayer protection legislation, passed after some disaster contract like the big dig, which actually reduces the ability to objectively evaluate the realistic and competent bids. Minor example: Town AV girl needed a new video camera. She knows what she's doing, researched, found the best model as far as pricepoint/features and a good place to buy it. We had to convene 2 subcommittee meetings and make her go way out of her way to find that model offered 2 other places so we had 3 bids, and document them, before just doing what she wanted to do anyways. Probably wasted an additional 10 hours of salary on the taxpayer dime. This is all by statute, it wasn't us being a bunch of bureaucratic morons.
- erichocean 14y ago
  For those two specific examples? 1. Town Hall. Instead of building a new building, rent office space somewhere else that was privately built. 2. Public School. Same deal -- taxpayers pay more per pupil for public school than they do for private school, so send the kids to private school and close the public school. There's no point in getting on to Government for being inefficient in a system like the US, but we can get on to them for doing the NIH thing by default. When the private sector does something better, LET THEM DO IT.
  - Anechoic 14y ago
    Town Hall. Instead of building a new building, rent office space somewhere else that was privately built. In very small towns I've seen that done, but that makes less sense for medium to larger towns and cities for a variety of reasons. taxpayers pay more per pupil for public school than they do for private school, so send the kids to private school and close the public school. A large part of that is because private schools don't have to admit (or can expel) students with special needs and behavioral problems. Force the private schools to have to deal with those students, and chances are those costs will increase.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - larrys 14y ago
      "because private schools don't have to" Exactly. I always find it interesting (and this isn't a critique of the parent) just an observation that when people use an example such as "In <insert country> <insert thing> costs <insert percentage> less than in the US therefore...". This is always tossed around with healthcare for example.) Things are never equal and can't be. It's like comparing heating costs in San Francisco vs. Montana w/o considering the temperature. Details matter and rarely in a casual observation of the on the surface facts can you account for why something might be possible in one circumstance but not another. Private school teachers, at least in one case that I am familiar with, got paid less than the public school teachers in the same district. They were of a younger age group and were only doing it for a short period of time before moving on to bigger things. Also the fact that they had much smaller classes and a different student population made the job less stressful. And a host of other factors that would be difficult if not impossible to scale to a public environment.
- littlegiantcap 14y ago
  Perhaps you could do blind bids then just cut the top 10% and the bottom 10%. Get enough bids to make a bell curve and then take one standard deviation. That way you can get a deal, but still be reasonable enough to finish the project within budget.
Anechoic 14y ago
Official in town who's managing the project shows up, "What the hell are you doing! You can't lay concrete while it's freezing." Wait, what? Town official witnesses substandard work and just let's it go on? How was that not grounds for at least withholding payment from the contractor? we settle for $500k in damages, not enough money to fix the defects. No retainage? Shitty contractors to be sure, but in a properly-executed contract agreement, there should have been ways to mitigate the poor performance.
- jbooth 14y ago
  No retainage? You don't bring in your generalist town counsel on retainer to handle a million dollar construction lawsuit. Would've been nice to get all that work for free, mind you, but he's not in the construction lawsuit business and didn't have 1.5 million of free time that year, or any expert witnesses laying around. Town official witnesses substandard work and just let's it go on? How was that not grounds for at least withholding payment from the contractor? Withholding payment means a more expensive lawsuit than the sidewalk was worth. We wound up just dealing with the shitty cracked sidewalk. Don't get me wrong, he reamed them out on the site, but they basically told him to get lost and when we explored our options, turns out we had to just take it.
  - Anechoic 14y ago
    You don't bring in your generalist town counsel on retainer to handle a million dollar construction lawsuit. Why would counsel get involved? Retainage is a pretty common practice for exactly this kind of situation. In fact I'm still waiting on payment for work performed two years ago for the exact situation you described.
    - jbooth 14y ago
      Oh. Thought you were saying we should get all the legal work for free because of our retained counsel. The way the contract was structured (apparently 'standard'), we retained about 2% of the total. Hard to retain more because the GC does have to pay subcontractors, or at least that's what we were told. We withheld, they sued, we countersued.
delinka 14y ago
"...not enough money to fix the defects." Not even enough to cover legal fees. Would have been cheaper just to fix it.

by jbooth 14y ago

larrys 14y ago

"Lowest bid wins, realistic and competent bids lose." But what would the best practice be to determine that the realistic and competent bids are objectively evaluated? How do you solve that problem in the real world (and not even talking about any other conflicts or issues)? Employ consultants or? My anecdote would relate to government bidding for some mfg. projects. It was very clear that the people evaluating the bids (at least in the small area I was involved with) took into account the reputation of the bidder in awarding the contracts.

jbooth 14y ago
It's hard. Usually it's well-intentioned taxpayer protection legislation, passed after some disaster contract like the big dig, which actually reduces the ability to objectively evaluate the realistic and competent bids. Minor example: Town AV girl needed a new video camera. She knows what she's doing, researched, found the best model as far as pricepoint/features and a good place to buy it. We had to convene 2 subcommittee meetings and make her go way out of her way to find that model offered 2 other places so we had 3 bids, and document them, before just doing what she wanted to do anyways. Probably wasted an additional 10 hours of salary on the taxpayer dime. This is all by statute, it wasn't us being a bunch of bureaucratic morons.
erichocean 14y ago
For those two specific examples? 1. Town Hall. Instead of building a new building, rent office space somewhere else that was privately built. 2. Public School. Same deal -- taxpayers pay more per pupil for public school than they do for private school, so send the kids to private school and close the public school. There's no point in getting on to Government for being inefficient in a system like the US, but we can get on to them for doing the NIH thing by default. When the private sector does something better, LET THEM DO IT.
- Anechoic 14y ago
  Town Hall. Instead of building a new building, rent office space somewhere else that was privately built. In very small towns I've seen that done, but that makes less sense for medium to larger towns and cities for a variety of reasons. taxpayers pay more per pupil for public school than they do for private school, so send the kids to private school and close the public school. A large part of that is because private schools don't have to admit (or can expel) students with special needs and behavioral problems. Force the private schools to have to deal with those students, and chances are those costs will increase.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - larrys 14y ago
    "because private schools don't have to" Exactly. I always find it interesting (and this isn't a critique of the parent) just an observation that when people use an example such as "In <insert country> <insert thing> costs <insert percentage> less than in the US therefore...". This is always tossed around with healthcare for example.) Things are never equal and can't be. It's like comparing heating costs in San Francisco vs. Montana w/o considering the temperature. Details matter and rarely in a casual observation of the on the surface facts can you account for why something might be possible in one circumstance but not another. Private school teachers, at least in one case that I am familiar with, got paid less than the public school teachers in the same district. They were of a younger age group and were only doing it for a short period of time before moving on to bigger things. Also the fact that they had much smaller classes and a different student population made the job less stressful. And a host of other factors that would be difficult if not impossible to scale to a public environment.
littlegiantcap 14y ago
Perhaps you could do blind bids then just cut the top 10% and the bottom 10%. Get enough bids to make a bell curve and then take one standard deviation. That way you can get a deal, but still be reasonable enough to finish the project within budget.

Anechoic 14y ago

Official in town who's managing the project shows up, "What the hell are you doing! You can't lay concrete while it's freezing." Wait, what? Town official witnesses substandard work and just let's it go on? How was that not grounds for at least withholding payment from the contractor? we settle for $500k in damages, not enough money to fix the defects. No retainage? Shitty contractors to be sure, but in a properly-executed contract agreement, there should have been ways to mitigate the poor performance.

jbooth 14y ago
No retainage? You don't bring in your generalist town counsel on retainer to handle a million dollar construction lawsuit. Would've been nice to get all that work for free, mind you, but he's not in the construction lawsuit business and didn't have 1.5 million of free time that year, or any expert witnesses laying around. Town official witnesses substandard work and just let's it go on? How was that not grounds for at least withholding payment from the contractor? Withholding payment means a more expensive lawsuit than the sidewalk was worth. We wound up just dealing with the shitty cracked sidewalk. Don't get me wrong, he reamed them out on the site, but they basically told him to get lost and when we explored our options, turns out we had to just take it.
- Anechoic 14y ago
  You don't bring in your generalist town counsel on retainer to handle a million dollar construction lawsuit. Why would counsel get involved? Retainage is a pretty common practice for exactly this kind of situation. In fact I'm still waiting on payment for work performed two years ago for the exact situation you described.
  - jbooth 14y ago
    Oh. Thought you were saying we should get all the legal work for free because of our retained counsel. The way the contract was structured (apparently 'standard'), we retained about 2% of the total. Hard to retain more because the GC does have to pay subcontractors, or at least that's what we were told. We withheld, they sued, we countersued.

delinka 14y ago

"...not enough money to fix the defects." Not even enough to cover legal fees. Would have been cheaper just to fix it.