In our view: A Better Way to Bid

One of the best ways to maximize taxpayers’ investment in public construction projects is to accept the lowest qualified bid. Fortunately, strict laws protect that process.

Unfortunately, two technicalities can keep the lowest bidder from getting the job, and that’s what happened earlier this week. Clark County commissioners accepted the third-lowest bid among those presented at an official bid-opening meeting. As a result, taxpayers will pay about $118,000 more for a portion of work on the large Salmon Creek-Interstate 5 interchange project.

The first technicality was the failure of Battle Ground’s Tapani Underground to include a signature page with its bid. For this, Tapani officials have taken full responsibility and, according to Stephanie Rice’s story in Wednesday’s Columbian, the company has reprimanded employees who were involved in the bid process. The second technicality — the wrong unit price for bark dust — led to the disqualification of Goodfellow Bros. Inc., which has an office in Portland. Thus, the $11.6 million bid by Rotschy Inc. of Yacolt was accepted, even though it was $118,000 higher than Tapani’s bid.

Obviously, this whole process is tightly regulated, but let’s go back to the most important stakeholder, the one presented in this editorial’s first sentence: the taxpayers. Is this really the best government can do for taxpayers? Spend $118,000 of their money that really doesn’t have to be spent? To allow technicalities to disqualify lower bids that in all other ways were acceptable?

The answer is no, this is not the best government can do in maximizing taxpayers’ investments, and one relatively easy solution is at hand. It’s called electronic bidding. The more-modern bidding system is used by the Washington State Department of Transportation, and Clark County officials are strongly considering adopting it. This bidding system resembles the process a customer uses in making an online purchase. If the customer fails to fill out a required field on the computer form, the request is immediately returned with those fields identified, often by red asterisks. When electronic bidding is used for government construction projects, the bidder is quickly notified if a required document such as a signature page is missing.

Current law also allows government purchasing departments to waive certain bid requirements that are deemed immaterial, and it seems to us that the cost of bark dust in an $11.6 million project should qualify for such a waiver. But Mike Westerman, county purchasing manager, said in a Wednesday interview that Goodfellow did not address the bark dust cost issue and make adjustments within the prescribed time period.

Again, though, what about the taxpayers? How can governments follow the law and still serve the public’s best interest? One way is to change the laws, modernize them. And if lawmakers won’t take action, then processes must be reformed. Modernization in this case means adopting electronic bidding.

County officials point out that the Rotschy bid — the one that was accepted — came in $950,000 under the engineer’s estimate, but that should not be seen as any kind of savings, no kind of victory. The engineer’s estimate is essentially a benchmark, and during a national economic crisis like the one that lingers so painfully, bids far lower than estimates are common.

Regulatory safeguards are good, but when technicalities unnecessarily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, a better way must be found. County commissioners should expedite the move toward electronic bidding, while keeping their focus trained on that primary stakeholder: the taxpayers.