Travis County Commssioners Court
December 31, 2002
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Item 15
Let's take up 15. 15-a is to authorize tnr to use an additional 104,351 in surplus 1984 bond funds and 985,351 of the 1997 cip bridge project savings for the liting road construction project. 15 b is to approve contract award for the construction services for the littig road project ifb number b 020093-jj to the low bidder, rgm constructors, lp. Commissioner Davis?
>> judge, I would like to move approval of 15-a at this time. I do have a question on 15-b?
>> any discussion of the motion to approve 15-a? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Any questions?
>> judge, I basically wanted to look at this as far as the minority participation in this particular contract. I basically wanted to know how the minority participation was achieved. According to the backup it's about 16%. I was wondering how did we get to that. I know we're looking for voluntary compliance hopefully at about 30%. And I'm trying to determine all that we arrived at 16% and how the person that we're looking at as far as awarding this particular contract, how did he go about selecting of looking for those to see if we can come into the voluntary 30% goal that we're looking at.
>> frank ober, assistant purchasing agent. Yesterday, commissioner, we invited the contractor to come to today's meeting. So if the contractor is in the audience, if you would come up to the table please.
>> that would be fine. Thank you.
>> basically, commissioner. What we do is we give vendors a look at the possible hub contractors and then it is their responsible when they're putting their bid together to contact whoever they choose and enter into some sort of agreement with them before the bid is sent in. And we get paperwork as bid of the bid response, we get indications as to what the scope of the hub participation will be. In this case it was 16.6, 16.7%. Okay. Well, and I guess -- we could ask them. I guess we're going to try to pin it down because it's continued to come up as far as looking for the goal. And even though it is a voluntary type setting, we want to make sure that the person that is doing business with Travis County look at that and say look, and we know Travis County is looking at about 30% goal here; however, we know it's voluntary, but we're trying to see if there is any really hard push to really get at that. Because on some of these contracts we're seeing greater than 30%. And I'm just wondering what happened in this case why we didn't get it closer if possible. And I guess i'll have to ask the vendor.
>> good morning, commissioner. I'm with rgm. It is our policy on all works. We have a list of minority vendors that we fax solicitations to. And as the response comes in, depending on the prices, we contact the individual vendors, if they're anywhere near a price that it's a workable price. We have a database, plus we update our database looking on the website and add to our remove from that database. And we contact all scopes of work, which we do not self-perform. We basically self-perform basically anywhere from 70 to 90% of the work on all the contracts that we bid.
>> would you repeat that, I'm sorry?
>> which part is that, sir?
>> the last part about the 70 to 90%.
>> we self -- rgm constructors basically self-performs anywhere from 70% to 90% of the work, depending on the scope of work and all other scopes of work we will send out solicitations for those scopes. For example, on littig road, the only forms of work that we wouldn't subcontract are the paving, erosion control measures. And the concrete rating. We buy those materials from a ready mix plant. And all the other scopes of work are forms that we perform ourselves. So for all the other, with the exception of paving, which which is erosion control, concrete materials, we solicit those particular scopes of work or material suppliers and ask them to send us a price.
>> okay. I wanted to make sure that we realize that we are trying to look at the voluntary situation that involves 30%. I'm going to continue to impress that on persons that are doing business with the county. And of course, this particular contract we're talking about over #- $.5 million here. And if we're looking at about 16%, and there are three different wbe, mbe participants within this 16% that you have selected; however, when you total those three up, which is about 405,000, $308 of the $2.5 million. So I think that it's very impressive that -- and imperative, I think, as far as I'm concerned, that we continue to share and look and make sure that the vendors that do come in are aware of the 30% goal, voluntary as it may be. We want to make sure that we continue to have it out accordingly. And I want to hear how you actually try to achieve had what you try to achieve as far as what you're doing. But as far as what I hear you saying is that most of the work that you're doing, you're doing in-house and, of course, the remainder is left for you to subcontract. So that's basically what I'm hearing from you, but I want to make sure that we're -- I'm looking very closely at this personally. And I just want to make sure that you have an opportunity to explain how you end up with the 16% with the particular three firms that you did sublet some of this contract to. Okay. That was all the questions i've got. And frank, I guess what I need to know is that hub list that you have -- and I know we've been working real hard, working with the purchasing department to ensure that we actually try to address some of these shortcomings as far as the hub participation, doing business with Travis County. I want to make sure that that hub list -- and I really don't know because I'm hearing the business community out there and persons out there that want to do business with Travis County are not a part of this list. So I don't really know what the list is comprised of, who is contacting who. I don't really know. But I am hearing that from the community that they're not a part of this process. So I don't know who is on your list.
>> yeah.
>> so I need to know what that is. But you have a happy new year and thank you for doing business with us.
>> I want to add that as the contract progresses, if there's -- if we cd contractors, we'll definitely look at the hub goals and solicit anyone that would be on that list.
>> okay. And I appreciate that. And like I said, it's voluntary. I like to be mindful of the 30% that we're looking at here. Some go over, some are at right and some are below. There is a right way to do it and I want to make sure the mechanism is in place so make sure we can get as close to it as possible.
>> thank you very much.
>> happy new year to you and your family.
>> on another contract we did exceed the goal. We were able to exceed the goal. On this particular one we couldn't exceed the goal, but we strive to do that, sir.
>> we appreciate it. Thank you.
>> and commissioner, for those folks who are calling in saying they are not on our list, if you would forward those times naimz to our office or encourage those people forgive our office a call, we'll make sure they get on our list.
>> I have done just that. I don't know if they have responded. It's one of those types of situations when they see you they ask you and then you tell them, direct them, but I never had a chance to follow up and see what kind of progress has been made after that. After that conversation. So again, I want to thank the vendor for being mindful of what we're trying to achieve here.
>> may I second your motion?
>> yes. Move approvalof 15-b.
>> any more discussion? Seconded by commissioner Gomez. All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote.
Last Modified: Wednesday, April 2, 2003 10:25 AM