The construction contractor for our ARRA funded March Point Park 'n Ride Rehabilitation Project discovered some saturated subgrade within the first couple of days on site. This is to protect the suppliers as well as to avoid open-ended contracts where unlimited purchases can be made at the originally quoted prices (a situation never intended by the parties). FTA requires indefinite quantity contracts to have minimum and maximum quantities, which when reached would require a new procurement action. The solicitation would inform the bidders of the total estimated quantities to be purchased by the participating agencies and the contract could then be structured as an indefinite quantity contract with minimum and maximum quantities. Your agency may want to consider a future joint procurement with other local agencies for fuel if you believe this would produce better pricing. #Cardinal authority manualThe Best Practices Procurement Manual discusses the topics of joint procurements and "piggybacking" in Sections 3.3.2 and 3.3.4 respectively. The scenario you describe would be considered a "tag-on" and thus a cardinal change. Can the other departments use this contract?Ī. This would mean additional locations and volume (50,000 gallons on a 1,200,000 gallon contract) to add to the contract that was not originally considered at the time of the bid. Some of the departments have asked if the contract can be expanded to include them. Can a fuel contract be amended to increase quantities and include additional locations for delivery without being considered a cardinal change to the contract? We are a city department, and our current contract is attractive to the other departments. #Cardinal authority professionalConducting a new competition would preclude any questions later from FTA or the professional engineering community. From an FTA perspective, however, a competitive RFP would be much preferred, even if the incumbent has a competitive advantage by virtue of its present contract work. The sole source justification, although discouraged, would need to be processed through appropriate agency management levels for approval. If your agency's decision is to award the oversight work to the incumbent, your choices are a sole source add-on to the existing contract or the award of a new sole source contract. First, the project management oversight phase was not within the contemplation of the original competition, and the new work is simply beyond the scope of the original contract, adding years to performance and substantially more funds and effort. The circumstances you described do not warrant a change order for several reasons. Is there is a way to consider this as a cardinal change to the existing contract or as a sole source and issue a new contract?Ī. The scope of the original contract did not contemplate Project Management, so change ordering it in could be considered a cardinal change, and issuing a new contract to them would be a sole source situation. It seems almost pointless and a waste of other firms resources to formally solicit for this requirement when the existing firm has to be considered almost a shoo-in. Obviously the firm already on board for several years has quite a leg up on another firm coming in and replacing them. We also discussed starting that process now (to speed up design and construction as we have an tight deadline) and having the new contract include Preliminary Engineering, which has yet to be done under Phase 3 of the existing contract. We have recently discovered that we will need someone to perform Project Management Oversight for the Design, Construction, Maintenance and Operation of the Streetcar. We have a consultant on board for work through Preliminary Engineering. We are in the process of planning for a Modern Streetcar. The subject of cardinal changes is discussed in the Best Practices Procurement Manual, Section 5.1 – Contract Changes. That would be a cardinal change since it goes far beyond the level of services the parties originally had in mind when the contract was awarded. However, if you awarded a contract based on a requirement for $150,000 in towing services, you could not issue a change order against that contract to require twice the volume of services. We would advise you to amend the RFP to give prospective vendors your more accurate estimate of the volume of services required. Does this constitute a cardinal change for which we should cancel the RFP and re-bid? We believe we could get a better price based upon our higher usage. However, the engines in our fixed route buses have a defect, and now we project that towing expenses will be at least $300,000. We recently issued an RFP for towing services with an estimated annual expense of about $150,000.
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