Ideas Already Submitted In CONTRACTING ISSUES Category

1. Design-build contractor selection-bias and fairness.
2. Bundling government contracts for efficiency-is it?
3. Deadlines for agencies and designers-benefit-cost


Design-build contractor selection-bias and fairness.
Public construction projects that will be let by a design-build-type contract usually have a two step selection process. The first step is an evaluation of the design, typically using a point system. The next step evaluates the bid prices, adjusted for the perceived value of the design from the first step. If one person on the selection committee has a bias against one of the designers, or overreacts to some artistic quality of the design and grossly undervalues a particular design, it may be possible for one member of the selection committee to override the consensus of the rest of the committee. It would be interesting research to study the statistics of the evaluation system to analyses the impact of one selection committee member and further to examine old selections to see if it has happened in practice.

Bundling government contracts for efficiency-is it?
Some major government entities have programs to bundle certain types of design and construction contract into one term or “umbrella” contract awarded to one major contractor, typically for a three or more years. The reason presented is that individual selections are time consuming for the government, and the selected contractor will save on overhead because of economy of scale. The individual contracts are negotiated as work orders by the government who will be familiar with that contractor’s capabilities and prices. This seems logical, but what if the umbrella contract process limits the number of major contractors, such only a few contractors are capable of bonding the contract. At that point, the contractors who are capable can raise their prices and the net effect may be an increase in total cost to the government.

Deadlines for agencies and designers-benefit-cost
Put jobs out for bid on a schedule to minimize construction costs. For example, the costs of barging materials versus shipping. There is a 25% premium for missing barge deadline. Often jobs are held up for reasons that have a much smaller cost implication – often administrative reasons with no real costs.