Kozaily wins Emergency Response Centre contract
Government will spend CI$281,700 more than the lowest tendered bid for architectural and engineering services for the new Bodden Town Emergency Response Centre.
Kozaily Designs Ltd. was awarded the contract for the tendered amount of CI$980,620. DDL Studios Ltd, the lowest bidder, tendered CI$698,920.
DDL principal Brian Eccles has referred the matter to the Office of the Complaint’s Commissioner.
‘The directors of DDL do not comprehend the rationale behind the Central Tenders Committee’s decision,’ he said ‘Government is going to spend over a quarter of a million dollars unnecessarily.’
Mark Urizar, senior projects manager with the Public Works Department, said there was concern about the number of hours estimated to do the project on the DDL tender. DDL proposed it could do the job in 6,400 hours while Kozaily proposed it could do the job in 9,045 hours, he said, adding that the other bidders were higher than that.
When the DDL price was divided by the number of hours it proposed to do the job, the hourly rate of $109 was actually higher than the $96 per hour the Kozaily bid calculated out to, Mr. Urizar said.
Mr. Eccles said he did not see where the hourly rate was significant.
‘We submitted a fixed price bid and were committed to fully completing the project as required by the design brief for that price,’ he said, adding that the estimation of man hours called for on the tender submission was irrelevant to the way DDL Studios or other professional consultants carry out design services in any case.
‘If we commit to a fixed price for a project, we will spend the requisite time to properly complete the project.’
However, Mr. Urizar said in the past when there have been much lower bids in relation to the other bids, there were sometimes variation costs submitted by the bidder ‘because they haven’t allowed sufficient time to do the work properly,’ he said.
‘You always run the risk that work doesn’t get completed or you don’t get the right quality,’ he said. ‘They could finish the project, but would it be what the client wanted.’
DDL Studios, which was founded 11 years ago, includes architects, quantity surveyors and interior designers. Current staff members have worked on many major projects on Grand Cayman, including several government buildings.
‘DDL is currently involved in designing a $35 million office building and a $72 million hotel and resort project, and we cannot understand how advisers to the CTC have overlooked DDL’s vast local experience and expertise.’
Mr. Urizar stated that he did not think DDL had sufficient experience in specifically designing emergency response centres.
Mr. Eccles pointed out that DDL’s Rodney Frederick, a Caymanian architect with many years experience, worked on the George Town fire station when he was with OBM Ltd. in 1989.
‘Fire stations are only a small component of emergency response centres,’ Mr. Urizar said, adding that Kozaily Designs had recently hired an architect from Canada that had specific experience with emergency response centres.
Mr. Eccles said DDL’s proposed Florida-based mechanical, electrical and plumbing consultant for the project had extensive experience in police, fire and hospital facilities.
When it came to rating the bids, Mr. Urizar said that pricing was only 40 per cent of the weighting for the tender selection criteria, a point which Mr. Eccles refuted by providing a copy of the Public Works Department tender brief.
The brief shows that 60 per cent of the weighting was on price criteria, with 40 per cent being in the fee proposal and 20 per cent on the project team staff hours and cost. The other 40 per cent of the weighting was under the heading non-price criteria, with the technical proposal and the outline services delivery plan each weighted at 20 per cent.
‘What we’re aiming for here is value for money,’ Mr. Urizar said. He also pointed out that the tender for architectural and engineering services was only a small portion of the CI$17 million the emergency response centre is expected to cost in total.
Chairman of the Central Tenders Committee Terrance Outar said the CTC questioned why Public Works did not recommend the lowest bidder when it came before them and that it was satisfied with the answer.
After being contacted by the Office of the Complaints Commissioner on the matter, Mr. Outar said a meeting was held last Friday to reassess the CTC’s original decision.
‘We looked at it in detail once more and the recommendation that came out the first time is still valid,’ he said. ‘The recommendation [to award the contract to Kozaily Design] hasn’t changed.’
Mr. Outar said the CTC ‘relies on advice of technical people’. In this case, the technical advice came from the Public Works Department, which was engaged by the Portfolio of Internal and External Affairs.
‘They had to satisfy [Internal and External Affairs] that they made the right recommendation before it came to us,’ he said. ‘They had to prove to them first that this was the right contract to go with.’
Mr. Outar stressed that price, while being an important aspect of any tender, was not the only consideration.
Since one of the main problems with the DDL bid, according to Mr. Urizar and Mr. Outar, was that an aspect of it was glaringly different from that of the other bidders, Mr. Eccles asked why Mr. Urizar did not contact him to query the point before rating the tender, as he did on a question about the total tender price.
‘Mr. Urizar was prepared to question the overall price so I am at a loss to understand why he wouldn’t be prepared to enter a dialogue on other issues, such as man hours, when a quarter of a million dollars of government money was at stake.’
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