Travis County Commissioners Court
October 28, 2008
Item 27
>> well, let's do 27, then we'll call ms. Flemming up. Forecast.
>> I told ms. Campbell to be here about 10:30.
>> I'm here all day. 27. Consider and take appropriate action regarding the issuance of request for qualifications (rfq) no. Q090041rv, Travis County central campus study for a strategic needs analysis and facilities master plan.
>> good morning, judge, commission, cyd grimes, purchasing agent with me Margaret bryce, my office, christian smith, special assistants, belinda powell, our capital planner. There's been a group working on this for quite some time. Facilities management, county attorney's office, and its. We have sent y'all a draft of the rfq, I believe two or three weeks ago christian brought forward the scope of work which we approved. We tried to get it altogether. A little bit more tweaking to do. A couple more changes. There's nothing substantial. For example, richard, my purchasing assistance who is supervising this has the flu. And we were going to try to get this issue tomorrow, but with him out I'm going to have to wait until Friday. So it will be changing the date. Also we had, I'm not sure which copy you got, but there was some copies -- we have been working on this altogether. There was confusion. The preproposal conference is going to be November the 13th. And instead of my office, which is not big enough. We're going to have it down here in the Commissioners court room. There was some questions that you might have seen going back and forth from the criminal judges. We have answered their questions, they are fine with -- with what we have done in the document to cover their interests, also the sheriff. We have added a clause that talks about -- about allowing any firms that submit on this proposal to submit on future actual buildings. So we're not excluding anybody in the a and e arena from -- from competing on this one and not competing on the next one. So -- because this is high level strategic type analysis, not actual designing a building. So we have added that clause. We need to add like walter legronde to the t list. We also in attachment 6 which talks about the -- about the evaluation process, there's a couple of words, one says oral presentations, it's really not presentations, they are going to be interviews. We are going to be interviewing them, we want to be consistent in our language. The other thing is that we want to make it very clear to the submitting firms that when they come for those interviews and when they give us the qualifications and the experience of individuals, those are the individuals that we want working on the project and those are the people that we want to be at the interviews. We have been tricked before. So we -- we want the actual people that's going to be doing the actual work on this project for us to interview and meet with. That also -- that also will be included. We have added the word comprising the project team. We want the qualifications, experience of the firm. We also add the sentence talking about the lists or qualifications are ranked in the order of importance for the project. Those were, you know, just some of the tweaks. Tim leija been really really business with other projects we have been working on the pas up until -- christian spent all afternoon yesterday today, sometime with continually tweaking the final psa pretty much or standard psa, of course negotiated after we begin negotiations so what we bring back to you at the end will be the final contract with all of the changes. So we have just got a couple more minor things in that psa to work out, we are ready to go. So we are asking, today that you authorize the purchasing agent to issue this and begin -- again get started on the proper consumer process.
>> before we go -- procurement process.
>> before we go through the rest of this process, I received a phone call yesterday. I didn't know exactly how to address it. I think that I addressed it the best that I could that is in the future attempts to maybe acquire properties to -- to I am concerned, where that should land, in the overall scheme of things. So is -- I don't know if christian had received a call yet, but I directed the person to -- to christian smith in the overall scheme of things. So -- so how is that handled, just taken into consideration as we go through the process if there are properties made available, something like that. Can be made available. I just -- just curious.
>> I mean Commissioner, we have been negotiating with equus to be our broker for this downtown project certainly and -- search and in that contract the main points of contact is roger el khoury, however, because this project is so closely tied with that contact, christian smith and roger will be working hand in hand. They can call either christian or roger. Roger and christian --
>> I did direct the person to the proper person.
>> yes.
>> one of my goals will be to -- to ensure that within a sphere of influence in the downtown region, a predetermined geographic region whenever anything is available, you are informed. That may be something big, maybe small. But that the Commissioners court has -- has a -- a robust visibility on a region surrounding the civil courthouse, the historic courthouse from now on.
>> okay.
>> you can refer them to roger who is the primary contact. You can refer them to me between the two of us.
>>
>> [multiple voices]
>> talk to you and instead of roger, but --
>> that's fine.
>> but either one of you all can handle it. Okie-doke. Thank you.
>> thank you.
>> when will we be done with tweaking the rfq?
>> hopefully by Friday because we want to issue it on Friday.
>> people have until the 13th?
>> they have -- they have until the -- until November the 13th is the preproposal conference and the proposals are not due back until.
>> December 15th.
>> December the 15th. So we're -- it will be out on the street almost 45 days. I think we lose maybe a day or two. And we have been -- christian has been working along with others to come up with -- with, you know, firms that we really want to make sure and we're trying to notify all them so they make sure that they get a copy of it through our bid sync and -- and make sure they understand how to register with bid sync so there's just some -- some more things that we need to do. I want to issue it with -- with -- I don't want to issue it with errors in it.
>> we have a list of 43 architectural and urban planning firms who have distinguished records in this field. Both in Texas and nationally along with eight data center firms, these are not necessarily firms that are on a preferred list. They are -- they are qualified firms that we are simply going to contact, there is the rfq, the master plan for the downtown region, please look at the rfq through the bid sync system, if you are interested please -- please respond accordingly. And -- and our goal is to have a very -- have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the qualifications of the firms that we receive so that we are in a position to choose the best among the best. As opposed to the best among the rest.
>> when is that?
>> [indiscernible]
>> hopefully there will be enough room.
>> hopefully there won't be enough room so many people interested.
>> yes, we both said the same thing just opposite ways.
>> that's right.
>> glass apples.
>> what do you do if there's not enough room?
>> we will bring in chairs?
>> > we should have an idea of how many people have submitted -- well, we won't know until --
>> we have like I say, we just found another larger -- find a larger -- up front. We are Travis County. The meeting rooms are all over the place, we just have to know the address and give it, right?
>> we can do that.
>> okay. On the airport. We can do that.
>> last time I was there you can open those dividers or petitions and -- and -- and could be as large as you want to plus the parking may be better there anyway.
>> we have done prebid conferences out there in the past on some of our larger projects.
>> when we have a preproposal conference, what is it that we expect participants to -- to do?
>> [one moment please for change in captioners] may be leslie and roger talk a little about the scope of work and then it's their opportunity to ask us questions. If they have any questions, if our document is not clear to them, it's their opportunity to ask any type questions. We also do a sign-in list of everybody that's in attendance. We make a copy of that to share with some of the other people in the room, especially our hub firms that might want to get in on it so they can network during that pre-proposal conference because there's a couple of disciplines that some firms might not have so they will either have a subcontractor or do it as a joint firm scenario. So we share that kind of information with them, it's their opportunity to ask questions. Then after the pre-proposal conference, we take all those questions and then in writing we answer them and send them to everyone so everyone has the same information.
>> and is a participant -- is it mandatory?
>> we are not making it mandatory. We legally have that authority, but we use it very rarely. Because if you make it mandatory --
>> I'm not suggesting.
>> it's not mandatory. It's optional.
>> it's been an issue a couple times in the past. Questions?
>> I have two that are brief. One, I was looking at attachment 6, and just for clarification, after the interviews the evaluation committee will make a final recommendation to the purchasing agent and the purchasing agent will make the recommendation to Commissioners court. And just for clarity, that's -- is that just carrying the recommendations of the evaluation committee to the Commissioners court?
>> yes.
>> essentially?
>> yes.
>> okay.
>> we discuss it and hopefully we're all on the same passenger and then we come forward with that recommendation to court.
>> I think this is a great opportunity for that kind of collaboration and I'm thrilled. The other question was on page 17 of scope of services which we've already approved, but it's not in regard to the wording of the scope of services, more to what will happen in action on it. It seems that in some respects item d on page 17, for instance, overlaps some with the planning and budget office's efforts to go forward with business plans. And I just wanted to see perhaps belinda could speak to this, how we would see what I think is really cross matrixing in this project and the various departments, whether it's auditor's office or p.b.o., facilities management.
>> this is something christian alluded to when I talked about the scope of services before, and one of the things that the planning and budget office will be working on is documenting with the departments programmatic information and forecasting their growth trends over the last 10 years and forecasting for the first 5 years, and then applying or space standards through a rough matrix. That does a couple of things for the consultant. It gives them a good background of consistently documented information in the same format more every department they are going to look at that we'll pass off to them before they get here. And the objective of applying something related to a forecast is for them to also look at how we use our space standards and our existing space standards that we have today, because that is something they are going to look at and validate, refine, et cetera. And so it will give them 30 application of it to use as a test forum in looking at those things so that when they hit the ground here, they may actually go back and refine some of that information or change it, but they've had a test pattern, if you will, run on 30 different departments on those standards and forecast trends and then also they have consistent documentation about our agency. So that's what we are doing in p.b.o. With the analysts, starting in November we have November to March and actually the end of February to pass off to the consultant, and they will pick up in d taking all of that information and forecasting to 2035 with the departments. And then applying either revised recommendations to our space standards or the space standards we have or perhaps even some new standards for different types of applications that we haven't necessarily considered.
>> so it sounds like as far as d is concerned, the plan is to integrate the consultants into what p.b.o. Is doing rather than p.b.o. Integrating to what the consultants are doing.
>> yes, and actually we've estimated that we can save about 1,000 man-hours on this contract by using the and in list to collect some of this information in advance. So they are going to be starting work with the department from the documents that we plan to help them produce and they will be the department's documents. They are going to be telling themselves about-tolling the consultant about themselves.
>> [one moment please] z from space needs but from a technology need. We've talked about telecommuting and all those things.
>> as we indicated in the last discussion, the initial work on the ground with p.b.o. And the departments is really to have the departments talk about themselves and highlight what they already see are key operational issues. Because once you see 30 of those together, the consultants can really get a sense of where we might have operational initiatives that need to be undertaken and focused on fairly quickly so it makes better use of their time.
>> okay. Let me return to my first question briefly. Have we already established the evaluation committee?
>> yes.
>> okay. It's composed of five people, joe harlow, belinda powell, christian smith, roger khoury and that is perfectly acceptable with our most visible district judge and his colleagues.
>> I'm good. Thank you very much.
>> the court has not weighed the right to change that, though.
>> that is a recommendation for the Commissioners court to approve perhaps today.
>> remember we talked about the process -- we talked about the process, you know, if you all preferred, and I think you all do in this case, that we would actually have the top ranked firms once we decide those come to the Commissioners court and do their interviews with y'all. So that's where y'all will have a lot of input and opportunity to ask them direct questions.
>> move approval of the proposed r.f.q.s.
>> enthusiastic second.
>> discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you all very much.
>> thank you. Going back to the 10:30 item, and then I'll call you up after this, ms. Fleming.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, October 28, 2008 1:38 PM