Low bidder needs to meet the bid requirements

St. Paul MN - A battle is brewing in Minneapolis - St. Paul over a bus order that was awarded to Gillig Corporation rather than New Flyer Industries (NFI) who was the low bidder for the order. How this is being dealt with by the politicians shows a problem that can effect every transit system.

Minnesota State Senator Tarryl Clark (D) has introduced a bill that would force the Metropolitan Council to award the bid to the low bidder, NFI.

Sounds good right? Awarding the bid to the manufacturer that can supply the buses at the lowest cost is how it should be done *but*, there's a hitch. NFI didn't meet the bid specifications.

The bid specs clearly stated that there was to be a 2 year warranty. NFI refuses to honor a 2 year warranty and would only offer a 1 year warranty with conditions. This really doesn't surprise me as NFI has had issues in the past with other transit systems that required a performance bond be posted, something NFI refuses to do and why my local transit system doesn't have any NFI buses running around.

Another issue in the request for bid was training. While this issue is cloudy as the bid asked for 3,000 hours and NFI stated a dollar amount of training it would provide. They could net out but the warranty issue is extremely critical.

While the low bidder should get the contract, the simple fact that NFI didn't meet the criteria, especially on the warranty, should disqualify them. In most cases, it would however NFI has a plant in Minnesota and the NFI union and politicians are howling over this and trying to force the system to award the bid to NFI.

The big problem here is that political muscle is going to be used to award a contract to a bidder that did not meet the bid requirements. This could spell problems down the road for Minnesota transit systems where NFI could low ball the bid without meeting any of the requirements. "Warranty? What warranty? There's no stinkin' warranty".

This is almost an exact opposite of a similar issue in Broward County, FL. There, NABI was low bidder and met the requirements but transit officials kept trying to award the bid to NFI. Here, NFI was the low bidder but failed to meet the bid requirements. If NFI met the bid criteria or was off by a trivial issue, I would be on the Metropolitan Council's case for awarding the bid to Gillig but a warranty is hardly a trivial issue.

Government needs to watch themselves when they push bills such as what Senator Tarryl Clark is putting forth. These types of knee jerk reaction bills tend to back fire badly in the long term and in this case, it'll be all of the transit systems in Minnesota that suffer when it does back fire.