County Contract

[Jeff 232]

Need some help !!

I do some work at Myrtle Beach Airport. Im under contract to do 1 area of concrete in front of the terminal. Yesterday I got a call to look at a building for them.

The Cheif of Maint , real nice guy has been with the county for years. all county projects usually have to be put out for bid by law. You may remember me talking about a job I lost to clean soot off a wall and I didnt get the bid because I was to high$$ and the PW contractor that got the job couldnt get it cleaned and we finally got it and got it clean. The Cheif of maint likes our work. He told me yesterday he's been trying to figure out a way to put us on a long term contract to do ALL the PWing at the airport - YAHOOOOO, great opportunity

The problem is he needs some kind of set $$$ rates to get it through county. He doesnt want to have to bid the stuff out all the time and he wants us to do the work

Now we both were trying to figure how the heck we can come up with rates, yes flat works no problem to give them rates , but things like building washing how the heck can I come up with set rates. they have dozens of buildings & surfaces on & off the airport. But how can I give rates when one building may be splash & dash and another building may be full restoration chems

He wants us and we want long term contract how the heck can we get pricing to get final OK from county

ANY HELP PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can you believe how lucky I've been getting

I LOVE THIS BIZ

TPWKOMB

Jeff

[Washaway 64]

This is one is a tough one and you'll spend some time surveying for sure.

Have a set price /sqft for flatwork.

Then set your price /sqft for gum removal, oil removal, rust removal...etc.

Have a set price /sqft for two story substrate and then another price /sqft for 2+story and lift assisted jobs.

Give them prices on equipment surcharge (scissor lifts, cherry pickers, etc) and offer to save them those costs if they provide the special equipment......most of the time they own a few things here and there.

You know what your chems cost you and you know, how much of what you need to clean a certain area. From there you can pretty much tell how much more you'll have to charge for the use of chems.

The other way of doing it is by giving flat fee rates per section, per building, per situation (rust removal, oil removal, gum removal, etc)

The difficult portion of this will be determining your rates based on frequency of cleaning.

DON'T GIVE DISCOUNTS ON PROMISED FORCASTS!

Instead try to come up, the best you can, with a discount tier that they can use for forcasted budgets.

ie: $200 to clean building.

-$ 15/service if cleaned every 4 months.

-$ 35/service if cleaned every other month.

You can do this with per sqft rates aswell.

Good luck.

[FLORIN 21]

Is an hourly rate an option? Maybe hourly plus chem cost?

[Washaway 64]

I'd find it hard to believe that an entity such as a county would accept a bid, on something as large as that, based on hourly rates.

Why trust the contractor not to pad the Invoices?

Who's going to monitor to make sure he spent 2.6 hours onsite as opposed to 3.2?

If you charge 10cent/sqft then it's 10cent/sqft. The only question left is how much sqft was cleaned.

Someone can always go out and measure to make sure bids aren't padded.

Jeff could use hourly rates in order to calcuate flat fee rates but I think it would be suicidal to hand in a bid with hourly rates.

Jeff, in no ways am I implying that you are dishonest. I'm simply making a point that there are a lot of players involved in you getting this job and even more that will be questioning budgets at a later date. And trust you me that things will get questioned.....you just might not hear of it. The simpler and straight forward price schedule is the better for you in the long run.

[FLORIN 21]

My bad.

[Scott Stone 604]

Sorry, but you are wrong. They often do hourly rates. They are also monitored closely, until they trust you.

As for the rest, there are ways around anything.

[Washaway 64]

If I remember correctly, and I've have two drinks, what I said was that I'd find it hard to believe.

Then again nothing suprises me anymore.

A woman called yesterday and asked if I was the pressure cooker.

I confessed :lgwave:

[CHUCK 14]

give them a rate sheet ,make one for building sizes,thats what i do.

[PRESSURE PACKED 14]

Ask Him What He Maintains,,, Price It All. Then Give Him A Price X Amount 1x A Year X Amount 2x A Year. Then That Will Be Your Yearly Maintenance Contract Price

[Scott Stone 604]

You are not understanding, this probably has to go out to bid, and the low bid will get the award. There is not a whole lot that can avoid the process as it is outlined.

[Washaway 64]

See now I disagree with you. Just b/c you're dealing with the county it doesn't mean that the lowest bid will win the contract.

I know that tends to be the case but it's not 100% of the time.

It sounds to me like he's already got one foot in the door and they're happy with his services.....that's the reason he's been invited to bid.

[PRESSURE PACKED 14]

I Understood It As He Was The Only Vendor With A "chance" And That He Was Able To Bid Out What He Needed To Get Cleaned And Jeff Would Be The "winning Bid"

[Scott Stone 604]

You are right. There are different varieties of bids.

1, IFB or Invitation for Bid. These are usuaaly awarded to the lowest responsible bidder. If they do not award it to the lowest bidder they better have a really good reason.

2. RFP or Request for Proposal. These are usually done on an evaluation basis. Some times they purchasing dept. will actually make their own copies of the RFP to have a blind evaluation. Whatever they do, there is an evaluation process, and it is still usually the low bid. There is a lot more to it, but these are the basics.

In my experience, and I usually bid on about 10 major contracts a year, the bids are IFB's or Low bid wins. There is one city that always does an RFP and they are far and away the most difficult people to work with. They have some departments that the administrator is such a jerk that I will not even put in a bid, and I used to bid everything. A lot of it is just learning the local ropes.