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I also question when they discovered the error as this could have been avoided prior to closing with a clarification addendum or before awarding and avoiding a complaint being filed. They have caused themselves potential monetary and reputational damage for not have procedures in place.
If the general contractor was the principal contractor then you are responsible for the management and control of the workplace and the risks associated with carryout the construction work and are required to prepare and maintain a health and safety plan. Every person that is to carry out construction is to be made aware of that plan and has the right to inspect it but also can’t contract out of it if something goes wrong.
Fully agree that both have the responsibility but that responsibility may not be equally shared.
In this case I believe liability should be shared as, even though Vasco has warned the general contractor of the danger and proposed an alternative he still proceeded ahead, knowing of the risks.
The general contractor should be held liable as he was warned of the risk multiple times and the work site was under his supervision and he insisted the work continue and even assumed verbal responsibility.
Both parties knew of the risk but neither party acted to prevent it. A general contractor can’t ignore risks just because a subcontractor is doing the work and a subcontractor can’t hide behind a contractors instructions when they what the consequences will be
Three recommendations I would make to avoid fraudulent billing practices for carpet installation work would be the following.
1. Contract documentation is a mandatory requirement.
If the contract requires that documentation is attached to the invoice, then invoices will not be paid without that documentation and an audit trail for the documents must be in place.2. Require measurement verification prior to payment of invoices.
Invoices must include a detailed breakdown of the measurements, and they must be independently verified for accuracy.3. Ensure contract management of project
A dedicated project manager should be assigned to a project of this size who can conduct random audits and catch issue prior to them getting out of hand.Procurement law exists to protect the integrity of the process and to ensure the process is fair and transparent and consistent with what was written in the RFP documents.
In this case they are not evaluating what was written in the RFP of 475 inspections and should reevaluate the proposals based on the correct formula that is written in the RFP. If the result is that Parkway is still the lowest bidder, they should be awarded the contract and E.G. Spence possibly bid preparation and court costs but no loss of profit damages.
Mantario Housing should consider this a learning experience to tighten up their evaluation criteria and create some policy changes.
Instructor Note
This comment is on track with the reality of what would or should occur.
In Procurement we say what we will do, then we do that. If anything changes, we issue an Addendum during a process. Finding a major error after Closing is hard no matter what. If you read most current public sector RFP’s they have strong language about privilege and no responsibility for bid preparation costs.
Those protections go out the window if they have changed the results after the fact, like in this case.Hi Samar,
It looks like you are hitting all the points but under on the word count, the assignment stated it should be 1000 words and I’m showing you’re at 768.
Hi Manal,
Your paper was extremely well formatted and organized and I really appreciated how much you went into detail on the evaluation criteria.
Very well done!
Hi Colisha,
The formatting and structure of your paper is precise, and you have effectively balanced cost control, performance accountability and innovation particularly with CPI indexed pricing and performance-based adjustments. Your evaluation criteria are detailed and practical, especially in addressing the challenges of remote service delivery. I think you have written a strong paper.
Janitorial contracts have always been a difficult case and get a redraft every tender but need a rethink as we experience the same issues. Time to get away from the task list and move towards cleanliness scores, occupant satisfaction, response time and availability and award based on those criteria and for the vendor to be proactive in cleaning and providing problem solving.
We have moved over to the NRFP model in order to be able to find the right solution and the right team rather than locking bidders into a price, although price still factors heavily in the decision. It seems to be working well but even that is not a perfect model when you have limited contractor pool to draw from for some tenders. Next step for us is to move into the multi-step procurement process to weed out those that have the qualifications that we need and then issue an RFP. Not remotely as complicated as E-Comm but stepping out of our norm.
This is a perfect example, and I agree with your approach to having a clear, task-based scope that provides structure and makes it easier to track whether the contractor is meeting basic requirements. At the same time, if you pair those tasks with defined outcomes then the contractor has the freedom to confirm that basic tasks are completed, but also that the overall cleanliness standard is being achieved consistently. We have had contractors noted for not completing the ‘list’ of daily tasks, but they were taken away from that list because of some other priority that arose that they deemed to take precedence for the cleanliness of the building.
The other side of that this is that the contract managers are currently putting a lot of time in with monitoring the performance of the contractors and that is taking a significant amount of time and effort into bringing contract standards up to par in some cases when if we put more effort into the front end planning with a vested outsourcing model this would hopefully ease the contract management in the end.
You capture one of the key strengths of vested outsourcing, which is aligning the goals of the buyer and the vendor which seems to contrast with our traditional contracts. It’s ingrained in us to pay for low cost that unfortunately we sometimes get that low standard out of the contract.
It will take a major shift to move towards measurable KPI’s, base payments for meeting minimum standards or additional bonuses for exceeding targets and remain within our budget constraints but would improve service quality and reduce micromanaging.
