Tag Archives: Consultants

7 Top Common Bidder Issues – #2 – Who to Contact?

Who to Contact?

Simply put, “who to contact”, really depends on the size of the municipality and at what stage of the procurement process you’re wanting to contact someone.

While procurement itself is governed by statutes, municipalities have the authority to put the processes and people in place to administer and manage the purchasing of goods and services on behalf of their taxpayers. Therefore, the responsibility for municipal procurement varies with each municipality.

All municipalities are required to have procurement policies and/or purchasing by-laws. Larger municipalities have more formal centralized procurement processes. This means their procurement by-law will be much more detailed and it will usually set out the roles of municipal staff in the procurement process. Larger municipalities usually will have a procurement department with a head of procurement – most likely a Chief Procurement Officer.

Other municipal staff (CAO, Finance, Legal, IT, etc.) and Councils all play roles in the process. Generally once Council has passed the budget approving the procuring of the goods or services for the year, it then becomes the responsibility of staff to administer the procurement process in accordance with the statues and their own purchasing by-law.

The purchasing of goods and ensuring adherence to the awarded contracts will be the responsibility of the purchasing department with oversight by the CAO, Finance, Legal and Department Heads. Generally, if you need to contact someone in a large municipality about procurement you would contact the Purchasing Department.

Smaller municipalities practice more of a de-centralized procurement model. This means there is generally no dedicated purchasing department and therefore no one person in the municipality who is responsible for administering the municipality’s procurement for all departments. Generally, the CAO will have oversight of all procurement but there are still many municipalities who have a Clerk, not a CAO so the Treasurer may take on the procurement role. In certain cases, Council itself may have a further role even after the budget has been approved.

In the de-centralized procurement model typically found in smaller municipalities, each department head develops their budget and once approved by Council, they are then each responsible for the procurement of the approved goods or services outlined in their budgets. While this works in theory the difficulty is that procurement is complex and individual department heads may not have thorough knowledge of the municipality’s procurement policies, so compliance with them may be jeopardized, which can place the municipality at risk of legal challenges from unsuccessful bidders.

Who to contact in a smaller municipality is sometimes more difficult to determine. If you want information on the municipality’s procurement process it may be best to acquire a copy of their purchasing by-law off their website which should identify who is responsible for procurement. Alternatively, you could contact the department head in charge of procuring the goods or service for their department, or the Treasurer.

With respect to “who to contact” about a particular bid opportunity, regardless of whether it’s a large or smaller municipality, there will be a designated person on the bid documents and you should always address questions to the individual named within the period of time specified.

Susan Shannon, Principal

muniSERV.ca

[email protected]

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Celebrating Member Successes – Congratulations DocuPet!

Brockville backs online dog tags

(Photo – RONALD ZAJAC/The Recorder and Times)

DocuPet picture wdp

By Ronald Zajac, Recorder and Times

Wednesday, August 24, 2016 5:45:22 EDT PM

An online pet registration firm will try to convince wary or indifferent Brockville dog owners to register their pets.

City council on Tuesday backed its finance, administration and operations committee’s recommendation of a five-year deal with with DocuPet Inc. for Internet-based pet registration and identification services.

Councillors approved the deal after removing a clause in the motion, by councillor Jeff Earle, requiring DocuPet to put pet owners’ phone numbers on the tags.

Kingston-based DocuPet expects to take over the services in the fall. 

Brockville, like other municipalities, has a low compliance rate for dog licensing.

A staff report notes the city has sold some 700 to 1,000 dogs tags annually in recent years.

Planning director Maureen Pascoe Merkley told council she estimates Brockville’s pet license compliance rate at 12 to 15 per cent.

That’s in spite of a city bylaw providing for the licensing and registering of dogs and prohibiting their running at large; it requires dog owners to register their pets and get an annual license, or dog tag.

Dog tag costs vary depending on the animal’s circumstances, but the average is about $28.50 a year for the owner. 

DocuPet is proposing to boost compliance with its services. Pascoe Merkley said she hopes compliance will increase by 10 per cent a year. 

Advantages of the online outsourcing include increased license revenue, decreased operating costs and benefits to dog owners such as a “lost pet alert” service and a rewards program DocuPet would work on with local businesses.

The proposed deal with the city is to determine a “baseline” of current licensing compliance. The city gets to keep all revenue within that baseline, in effect keeping what it already makes, while DocuPet takes half of all new revenue above and beyond that baseline.

The tags DocuPet proposed to use include an alphanumeric code for use online, as well as the city’s phone number for people who do not use computers. 

Earle reiterated his point that using the numbers of the pet owners is a simpler way of dealing with errant animals and eliminates the middle man.

Offering that option to users would make the difference between pet licensing being a service to residents, as opposed to simply a tax, said Earle. “It’s up to us to get them the best value for that service,” added Earle. He held up examples of other dog tags that included the phone numbers of the owners. “This is a much more user-friendly system,” said Earle.

City and DocuPet officials have said such an approach is impractical because the tags become invalid if the owner moves.

City clerk Sandra MacDonald also confirmed municipal protection of privacy law would require the city to get special consent from pet owners to put their numbers on tags.

DocuPet’s plan is for a custom-made tag, whereas designing specific tags for each owner would be logistically difficult, said Pascoe Merkley.

Councillor Phil Deery said he sees the licensing process as a tax. “The purpose of the tax is to off-set the costs of animal control,” he added.

Earle, clearly in the minority with his argument, then added another reason for his objections. “I don’t see a reason the dogs are being taxed and not the cats,” he said.

The city has in the past explored the option of registering cats but found it too onerous.

As he did at last week’s committee meeting, councillor Jason Baker stepped out on a conflict of interest because his employer makes animal tags.

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7 Common Bidder Issues

At a session I attended a couple of years ago the City of Mississauga’s procurement department identified these common bidder issues.

  • How to find bid opportunities
  • Who to Contact
  • Onerous Requirement & Lengthy Bid Documents
  • Not enough information
  • Not enough time permitted to respond
  • Bid Rejections – doing all the work only to have it rejected
  • Perception of Secrecy

Sound familiar? I imagine you can all relate to these concerns and they are often the very reasons why many consultants and professionals shy away from, or simply no longer respond to, price-based RFPs for professional services. Detailed pricing just takes a lot of time and responding to a RFP can cost respondents a lot of money in lost time alone.

This is the first in a series of informational articles/blogs on these common bidder issues.  I will be tackling each of these issues separately and will be offering suggestions on how you can address them throughout the series.

The first one:

How to Find Bid Opportunities

Municipalities have limited advertising budgets so the days of posting their bid opportunities in the local paper have all but disappeared, except perhaps where required under a trade agreement or their own procurement by-law. The reason is that hard copy advertising is probably the most costly way for municipalities to advertise bid opportunities – plus it’s not a very effective way either because the ads don’t necessarily reach their target audience – which is the professionals they want to respond.

Most municipalities now have a Bids/Tenders section on their own municipal websites and they will post any bid opportunities they have in that location of their own website. This works well if you’re a local consultant who only wants to work in a geographic area near your business but it would be far too time-consuming to check 444 individual municipal websites daily for new bid opportunities.

To get broader exposure for their bid opportunities, and ultimately to acquire more competitive quotes, many municipalities now post their RFPs on outside websites – like muniSERV.ca, specifically designed for RFPs for consulting/professionals services, or bids&tenders, etc. for construction and other RFPs.  This enhances openness and transparency in the procurement process, helps municipalities target their advertising directly to the professionals/vendors they’re trying to reach and increases the number and quality of quotes they receive.  Bidders pay a fee to use such sites but they do help professionals/vendors find and access hundreds of bid opportunities daily – plus they offer automated email notifications that will notify members when a RFP has been posted that matches the service they provide.

How a municipality advertises their bid opportunities varies but it should be set out in their procurement or purchasing by-law, or in a policy that forms part of their procurement by-law. Most municipalities will have their procurement/purchasing by-law posted in the by-law section of their websites, so if you want to check how a specific municipality in which you’re looking for work advertises their bid opportunities, you can get a copy of their procurement by-law from their website.

Larger projects with certain value thresholds which are subject to certain trade agreements will have specific advertising and notice requirements. Under such agreements procurement opportunities must be advertised for a minimum number of days, irrespective of the advertising method used. Again, the project value thresholds, the number of days and how they will be advertised can be found in the municipality’s purchasing/procurement by-law.

In the municipal sector procurement is a dynamic, sometimes complex process. It is governed by contract law as well as various statutes.

But as you can see there are a variety of ways to find bid opportunities. It all comes down to your preferred method and the time and money you want to spend on finding them.

Susan Shannon is Principal of muniSERV.ca.  Earlier in her career she was a municipal Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) and as a result she understands first-hand the challenges faced by both municipalities and professionals/vendors in public sector procurement.  Connect and follow her on LinkedIn, join the muniSERV LinkedIn Group or reach her at 855 477 5095 or [email protected].

 

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