Travis County Commissioners Court
March 29, 2005
Item 10
Item no. 10. 10 a briefing in response to rfq, number 2050047 mb, professional consulting services, tccc design build project and 10 b, consider and take appropriate action regarding evaluation community's recommendation on firms to be short listed select the highest ranked firm and authorize committee to commence negotiations.
>> judge is Commissioners, we received 8 responses on March the 1st to our solicitation. One of those firms we considered nonresponsive because they really were bidding on the second part of the project which will be to -- the actual design build construction. This again is to hire a consultant in accordance with the design build law that we have independent if we don't have our own professional consulting engineer firm to overlook the project. We had the evaluation committee made up of three representatives from the facilities department two from the sheriff's office, one from criminal justice. The scores, if you will notice on the matrix there was one firm that clearly was higher than all of them. Then we had the next firm came in just a few point under them. Then you had a tie between three and four. And then five, six and seven were all very close. We had considerable discussion in the committee about how many firms to short list and actually interview. Because of our time lines, because of the closeness in the scores, we really did go back and forth and felt like that we should spent quality time on the first two, top two ranked firms to do interviews with them. We feel fairly confident from those two firms we will be able to have a firm that we can negotiate with. If by chance one of those -- both of those firms do not negotiate and we do for the come to a contract -- do not come to a contract. We could come back and do interviews on the remaining firms. In my experience we hardly ever get to number two, number three is on the short list. It is the recommendation of the purchasing agent that we be allowed to interview the top two firms, rerank those and then begin the negotiations with the top ranked firm come back with Commissioners court with the actual contract. After negotiated.
>> help me understand how this process is going to work. I'll use a golf term here. Pardon me, it not a golf term. As far as having skin in this game, how is this whatever firm it is, going to have skin in the game related to having to be held to the estimates that they come up with if by the design of this process they are specifically precluded from being part of the part 2 of this, which is the actual doing what you say you need to get done. Because they don't have skin in the game. They have no contractual reason for their numbers to have to hold up, held up because they are not signing anything, because they are not building it. I知 not understanding how this two part process is supposed to work. And maybe I thought it was going to work slightly differently, that is we are only awarding part 1 of this with the idea that whatever estimate somebody comes up are one that's contractually, if the bonds pass, they can be held to. Whereas this could be a group that says, well, we thought it was this, we gave you our best estimate. Somebody has to come in and reaffirm numbers because they are the ones who actually have skin in the game, and would be contractually held to it, this is just having that fluor daniel feel to it all of a sudden of somebody saying one thing and not being held contractually accountable for things on the other end. Help me out.
>> well, do you want to take it.
>> well, i'll briefly note this -- the two part process is in fact the statutorily required sort of bifurcation of the whole process. First procurement of the professional services of the consultant under the professional services procurement act, which is what these two short listed firms will be doing. Then there is the actual as cyd said design build process. Under which another rfq will be issued and they will be hired to design and eventually construct the facility. In terms of artul obligations, the professional services agreement is just that, a contractsully binding agreement. That like our other professional architect and engineering agreements do require adherence to the contractual terms and in this case, again, because this is a professional services contract, if you notice the valuation committee criteria that were used, they are very project specific. That was intentional because we want to be sure that the consultants advice throughout this process, you want to keep in mind that per the statute, this consultant that we hire at the beginning of this project must stay on board for the duration of the project. So he does in that sense have a vested interest in the scope of work for this consultant will reflect that his duties will -- will extend throughout the duration of the project. But in this case the experience with other Texas jail projects, other design build projects, this may be the first for Travis County, but it's not our intention to award a contract to someone who -- for whom it is also their first experience with the design build project. The cost benefit analysis was a key component of the evaluation factors. Look at all of them in here. I would add, what I would add is that this -- this first group will be doing role -- and jim you all can -- can come up and add, do this, but this first group is -- really we're going to be -- it's the planning stage, they are going to have to do really good cost estimations. When we get to the second part, what we will negotiate is a maximum guaranteed rate that we will not go over much once we get the next group going, if there are cost overrun differences, those two teams have to work that out because we have a maximum guaranteed rate or price that we will pay to eventually design and build that facility. So I think the intent of the law was to allow these designers and contractors to work together to make sure that they meet the cots estimates of the -- of the original design.
>> so help me understand. How is this any different than if we had simply hired an architect/engineering firm to do 25% drawings so that we would have good estimates to be able to take to the voters of what we think it will take to do it and then takes what gets bid out in a totally separate competitive process.
>> in the bid, when you do it like that, when and you have bid price, you remember how many times we would come back with change orders.
>> I get it. We will not come back with those type of change orders that increase the costs of our maximum guaranteed price.
>> but I知 not understanding the connection between somebody who will have to work with the part 2 people and to be contractually obligated that they didn't get their job and get it done correctly. I知 not making a connection here some way in terms of how they are part of the other end where people have to actually put their signatures down and say, yeah, we can do it for that. Because these people are not part of that same process.
>> when they submit their proposal on that design build portion, they will be looking at those cost estimates that are provide understand that first cost estimation and if they have -- if there's huge differences in opinions, they will go back to our consultants and say hey they are having problem with this, why the discrepancy.
>> what if the part two people have idea how to accelerate schedules, do things a different way, accelerate stuff.
>> value engineering.
>> I hate to use that because that usually means chopping stuff to make it fit a budget. But let's say they have innovative ideas to accomplish the purpose, but it can be done faster and cheaper, how are those good ideas going to be incorporated if we are really depending on the consultants work from the part a people.
>> there are a couple -- I知 sorry, go ahead, roger, go ahead.
>> there's a couple of points, roger you can clarify if I知 off base or not. From what I understand first of all in the services that we're seeking under in rfq this consultant would stay on. The overlap is they would stay on to help us develop an rfpq help news the selection process. It kind of built in there's going to be a selection of somebody who is going to be qualified to interpret, you know, the programming and the schematics that is developed in the first place, the planning part and the other side of that is, you are right Commissioner on the other end of it, whoever helps to do the interpretation of that, part of that may be some more efficient design. Utilization. But that's going to be the part of it is the interpretation of it. If that's -- if that's on or off base roger let me know. That's my understanding.
>> you are on track. You are on track. Good afternoon, roger el khoury facilities management department. Project number two of the design build it's -- it will have, during the design build for the jail with a big large promise like this, it will save about [indiscernible] percent of the -- of the time and 5% of the costs, that came from about 375 projects recently done and researched by the construction industry institute. What we are trying to say on the design build it will have less change order down the road, the change order will not be, except for the change order initiated by the owner, changes in the scope of work. Change orders between the like error and omission, that would be taken care of internally by the design team. Between the design and the contractor and the designer, the design build team concept. What we are saying here is the design build team they have a different type of -- of idea of accelerating that would look into it. The consultant we are going to choose right here would be with us during the process, this time facility management would be on board all of the time, every step of the way to ensure that everything is done according to our plan.
>> I fully understand the part two part, the easy part of the design build part. I was trying to make sure that I understood the integration of what we are doing now with what we will do later to make sure that we had no unintended consequences or we had -- that's not what our expectations. So these have been very, very helpful explanations. This is a new process for us. That's one of the reasons we are hiring someone that has done design build and met all of our criteria. We also have mr. Marvin brice on this project, we remember all of the issues in the past, so we are all thinking, you know, to avoid those we remember what happened, we are going to try to avoid those. We will avoid those at this time.
>> the firm seems to have, it's okay to --
>> hok.
>> hok to see that -- seems to have a much better average than the others.
>> yes, sir.
>>
>> [one moment please for change in captioners]
>>
>> we'll come back to you with a contract, which will be several weeks.
>> it says authorize committee to commence negotiation, it doesn't mean finalize negotiations.
>> it's not necessary for you to come back with a contract, but a contract and a firm that's recommended. I don't know if we're authorizing y'all to make a choice, but I think we'll authorize you to do -- we're approving the recommended short list of two firms. We're authorizing administrative staff to come back and recommend them.
>> we can come back next Tuesday and have them reranked one and two and then you will authorize us to begin negotiations. We'll post that for next week.
>> that's the motion.
>> okay.
>> discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank y'all. Appreciate your hard work. My question for joe gieselman is whether we can delay our campo discussion for next week. We have to discuss a arterial a for executive session. Unfortunately, it may be five minutes or 50. In that discussion we need to discuss the campo last week. We have one meeting next Tuesday. If we can get arrest arrest tiewrl a discussion behind us today -- arterial a discuss behind us today, we can accomplish a whole lot. If we stay until 6:00 o'clock -- [overlapping speakers].
>> judge, what I would like to do is I submitted a statement to the clerk on my position on the vote on the 22nd of March, basically just a review. I submitted that to the clerk already, a statement on my position of the way I voted.
>> I was just asking for postponement of campo.
>> right. I just want to make sure that everybody understands why I voted the way I voted. And so I don't know if you call it up --
>> I think we ought to call it up after executive session on arterial a.
>> okay. I wanted to make sure the records show...
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, March 30, 2005 12:50 PM