Centre Wellington has awarded Associated Engineering (Ont.) Ltd. of Kitchener the contract for a road condition assessment within the municipality at a fraction of the originally budgeted cost.
That firm’s bid came in at $26,103, excluding HST.
The scope of work includes the inspection and assessment of the existing road network including an area profile, traffic count, evaluation of pavement rehabilitation and maintenance alternatives, selection of the recommended rehabilitation and maintenance alternative and capital works, a policy discussion as it related to levels of service, an implementation plan, and capital costing estimates.
The work is to be completed by the end of the month.
While seven firms were sent direct invitations and another eight registered via the municipal e-procurement website, only three submitted a bid.
One of those firms was Triton Engineering of Fergus.
Councillor Kelly Linton questioned why Triton had bid since the firm is the township’s engineer of record.
“How can they bid on a project when they are already an engineering firm for us.”
Manager of corporate services Wes Snarr explained the issue of an incumbent vendor bidding on procurement activity happens regularly in public procurement.
“At law there is no legally defensible reason to exclude them. The question then is ‘how would we exclude an incumbent?’ Legally we can’t.”
Linton then asked if there were any exclusions for the company bidding on any type of work.
Snarr said, “Legally we can’t exclude an incumbent vendor from bidding on any of the township projects. We have no legal basis and if we were to go down that road it would invite a lawsuit.”
Councillor Kirk McElwain said the budgeted cost for the work was $100,000.
“Is this a $75,000 savings?”
Snarr said the bid was the total package price.
He added this was the lowest bid of the three “by a substantial amount.”
Councillor Mary Lloyd questioned why the amounts of the other bids were not listed.
“Is that not something we normally do?”
Snarr said the township policy for RFP (requests for proposals) is held in confidence.
Councillor Fred Morris stated different rules apply when projects are tendered. Then the bids and quotes from the other companies are listed.
