Cedar Rapids pre-bid meetings designed to prevent disputes

Nine contractors, with faces buried in respirators and flashlights in hand, ventured last week into the city's eerily unlit, flood-wrecked Time Check Recreation Center, which is largely as it was after waters receded from the June 2008 flood.

Mold, asbestos and mercury-containing devices were only part of what greeted the contractors on this day. They also ran smack into the city's still-new policy that requires mandatory attendance at pre-bid meetings on major city public improvement, construction and flood-related projects.

Diane Rodenkirk, a purchasing agent for the city, began the meeting and tour of the Time Check building with the declaration: “You have to be here to bid.”

The policy of mandatory participation at pre-bid meetings, which is not exclusive to Cedar Rapids, is by and large the creation at City Hall here of City Council member Chuck Swore, a retired former vice president/general manager at Acme Electric Co. of Cedar Rapids. Swore has been a party to much bidding in his days at Acme.

Swore, who headed up what had been called the council's Procurement Committee that has now morphed into the Infrastructure Committee, persuaded the City Council to adopt the pre-bid policy in the summer of 2010 as a way, he says, to ensure true, competitive bids that result in projects with fewer job-in-progress disputes between city and contractor and a reduced number of change orders, added costs and cost overruns.

“If you want to bid the work, you're going to come in and understand the project,” Swore says.

Without mandatory pre-bid meetings, he says it's not uncommon for a contractor who does not attend the pre-bid meeting to submit the low bid and win the contract only to say, “Oh, I didn't know that” and seek additional money once the project is under way.

“We've eliminated design concerns,” Swore says. “I take the position that change order now comes when we (the city) decides to change something on the project, not when there's a design dispute.”

Rob Davis, the city's engineering operations manager, says that the City Council's mandatory pre-bid policy includes some flexibility so it does not apply to more run-of-the-mill projects like sewer lining, sidewalks and others. Asked why such a policy had not been in place before, Davis answers, “How often has the city built buildings?” noting that the city is now in the midst of a major, post-flood building effort.

“Now all of a sudden we have a lot of very complicated projects,” he says.

The city of Dubuque strongly recommends attendance at pre-bid meetings but does not make them mandatory, while Rick Fosse, public works director for the city of Iowa City, says pre-bid meetings are mandatory on some of Iowa City's projects. Those are “unusual” projects, including ones with a lot of architectural design features, he says. Pre-bid meetings protect not only the city, but the contractors, too, he says.

“Just as importantly, it prevents a situation where a contractor bids a project, commits themselves by contract and then discovers that they didn't understand the full scope of services,” Fosse says. “Then they're in loss mode, they're not going to make any money on the project, and that's not good for any of the parties because the project becomes a struggle at that point.”

Last week, as he prepared to enter the Time Check Recreation Center, Jeff Stahr, a supervisor for Environmental Management Services Inc. of Dubuque, said he liked mandatory pre-bid meetings because it gives him a chance to see all of the firms that will be bidding on a project. Contractors typically know one another and are familiar with how other firms bid.

“You have cards you're trying to play. It's a little like poker,” he says.

Stahr says he has had mandatory pre-bid meetings on projects with the Department of Veterans Affairs, and he says the meetings give everyone a chance to look over a project and ask and hear answers to questions so every contractor leaves with the same information.

“Somebody who is not at the walk-through doesn't have that information, and they may be the winning bidder. But they don't know everything they're supposed to do and all their responsibilities,” Stahr says.

George Heeren, operations manager for D.W. Zinser Co. of Walford, says the required tour of the Time Check Recreation Center gave him a good chance to see what was in the building and what it would take to get it out of there.

“With everybody (all the contractors) being here, everybody's on the same page,” Heeren says. “You don't have anybody coming in and underbidding just to get the job. … Then they say, ‘Oh, gee, there's more than we thought. We never got to see it when we bid it. So we're going to have a change order.'”

Swore says mandatory pre-bid meetings don't protect against every bidding surprise that can confront a city.

Case in point, the City Council is trying to figure how why the bids for mechanical and electrical work on the city's Convention Complex project soared above the city's pre-bid estimate by 46 percent and 87 percent, respectively. The mandatory pre-bid meeting on the Convention Complex project didn't protect against that.