FIELD COVERED RINK: Why was a much lower option ignored?
Why doesn't council even know about a bid that could have saved taxpayers $140,000?
Nine months ago, council approved the $1.26M Field Covered Rink project.
This project which was budgeted to cost $815,000 received almost no debate when council heard that bids came back at 50% higher.
Council awarded the contract to Capital Construction out of Sudbury for $1.138M (plus engineering fees) after staff recommended the company.
But that wasn’t the lowest cost option.
In the May 16th, 2023 meeting agenda staff told council that they had received four bids for the project but then presented a table consisting of only three options.
So I went looking for the mysterious fourth bid. First I was surprised to see that at this tender opening, enveloppes had already been opened off camera, which goes against normal procedures*. When reviewing the video of staff reading the tender offerings for this project I came to realize that the fourth bid was from a company based out of North Bay for substantially less.
*See other municipal tender openings for how it is normally done: Here and here.
DL Building Group offered a bid of $999,485. But for some reason it was not presented to council.
I have spoken to several councillors on this subject and none were even aware that there was a fourth bid or a lower priced option available.
Not only did staff not present the DL Building Group offer, they did not even disclose why the bid was ignored.
The fact that the contract was awarded to Capital Construction which appears to have won almost all major construction projects in the city over the last three years raises many questions as well.*
Request for Tender Window
During my investigation in this matter, another point of concern has sparked many questions for municipal staff.
The Field Covered Rink was one of the largest investments this city has made in a while. We would certainly hope to have the best possible price.
But when it came time to request tenders from the public, only a very narrow window was provided for those interested.
The official request for tenders was posted on April 27th, 2023 and closed promptly on May 11th. This gave interested companies less than two weeks to apply. This was one of the smallest timeframes offered when analysing recent requests for tenders issued by the municipality.
Many have been upset that more local contractors do not get the chance to bid on municipal projects. Some have raised concern about competitiveness. Obviously allowing bids for a longer period would allow smaller contractors without full-time estimators or project managers on staff to apply.
It is not clear why the city chose to have such a short window of application for such a large project.
I reached out to municipal staff twice in the last two weeks for clarification on the subject but at the time of publishing I did not receive a response.
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