Some years ago, I attended a US Army Corps of Engineers seminar on a new initiative called FAR 12. The overall goal of the initiative was to get government agencies to do business the way businesses do business.
For example, if a purchasing agent wanted to buy toilet paper for a military base, his/her first call should not be to Kimberly Clark or Scott Paper, but to someone who buys toilet paper for some other large institution, like a major university, and find out how THEY buy toilet paper.
It was thought that this would help reduce government expenses (i.e. no more $400 toilet seats) and make it easier for private sector firms to work with government agencies.
It was also hoped that this initiative would encourage purchasing and procurement staff to write their own RFQs and RFPs instead of "borrowing" similar ones and using them verbatim. The instructor used this example:
An agency had to purchase a piece of equipment (with maintenance), and had determined that Motorola made exactly the equipment needed. The purchasing agent borrowed an RFP, added specifications for his current need, published the RFP and waited for bids. The due date came and went, with no Motorola bid. After selecting another supplier, the procurement officer called his Motorola contact and asked why they had not bid. Motorola's responses was:
This equipment requires recalibration every 30 days, but your RFP stipulated weekly recalibration. Those three additional calibrations every month would eliminate our profit. So we decided to pass. By the way, why did you specify weekly recalibration?
The procurement person was at a loss to answer; he could think of no reason for this specification. He asked the technical person, who said he had only added the specifications for this equipment. Apparently, nobody read the rest of the RFP to see what was there from previous uses. The weekly recalibration had been a "leftover."
Unfortunately, this happens all too often. Procurement officers use an existing RFQ or RFP rather than creating a new one, without looking at what's already in the document.
Regardless of why it happens, too many RFQs and RFP are "borrowed" rather than created, and pre-existing text is rarely reread, so a "new" solicitation can squeak through with multiple requirements leftover from previous usages.
Many of these situations ultimately get corrected through the official procedure for questions and answers, and I guess many procurement officers think that an addendum, or multiple addenda, will be cheaper than making the effort to get it right the first time. But there is a cost to such an attitude, a cost that must be paid by the agencies, the A/E industry or both. I have experienced a few RFPs with more than 10 addenda each, many of those addenda requiring changes in the team's firm composition, or the addition or elimination of technical staff.
Here are some questions I've never seen tracked in the A/E industry:
- How many A/E firms have to make significant firm teaming or staffing changes as these addenda appear, with all the costs of doing so?
- How many A/E firms have to make significant content (text, tables, graphics) changes as these addenda appear, with all the costs of doing so?
- Rather than make these changes and suffer the costs they incur, how many A/E firms simply remove such agencies from their "watch" lists because they view the agencies as "careless" due to the number of addenda their RFQs or RFPs generally go through?
It seems to me that public agencies who borrow RFQs/RFPs without checking to see what's already included do themselves a great disservice by discouraging many fine firms from competing for that agency's work. And that's in addition to the cost of the extra staff time it takes to correct and republish the solicitation.
Perhaps they need a more than gentle reminder that if they haven't got time to do it right the first time, the certainly don't have the time to do it a second time, or a third, or . . .