Why were low bidders skipped over by construction manager on DDA parking deck project?

There is no legitimate reason for DDA downtown parking deck Construction Manager Christman Co.’s decision to skip over low bidders Granger and Colasanti and award the concrete package for the deck to themselves, the third bidder. Two rationales were given; Granger was “unqualified,” and Christman offered voluntary alternates that reduced their price after the bid, and neither of them hold water.

On the first point - setting aside the highly questionable contention that Granger is unqualified - if Granger was unqualified, then they should not have been on the bid list in the first place. The professional and ethical practice is to qualify the pool of potential contractors before you put a project out for bid, and then establish a bid list of pre-qualified bidders. Disqualifying contractors after the bidding only invites questions about motives and wastes the contractors’ time and money. Secondly, when Christman accepted their own voluntary alternates after the bid, this did not make them low bidder: it made their price lower, but it was a lower price for a different scope. The reason a job is bid after preparation of the plans and specifications is to allow everyone to bid on the exact same project - “apples to apples” as they say - and that’s the only way the true low bidder can be determined. If Christman is going to accept their own voluntary alternates - and as the construction mManager they would have an advantage in knowing which ones are likely to be acceptable - then everyone else should have been given the opportunity to give a separate price based on alternate schemes as well, before or after the bid. Granger and Colasanti could have given discounts for alternate schemes just as Christman did. One could make the argument that Christman should be given full discretion to award subcontracts to any bidder, regardless of price, since Christman has assumed the financial risk if the project exceeds the guaranteed maximum price. However, the financial risk to Christman is considerably mitigated by the ample “estimate contingency” and “risk contingency” permitted under their contract with the DDA. Accordingly, this diminishes any argument that their risk should afford them full discretion in awarding contracts, including the right to reject a lower bid without a compelling reason. It appears that under the contract the DDA gets at least a shared savings if the project comes in under budget. The difference between a low bidder and the second bidder (or third bidder) is a savings to the project, and if Christman fails to capture this savings then the DDA is being shortchanged. Finally, I want to take exception to the suggestion that “if the tables were turned, Podges said he thinks Granger and Colasanti would be doing exactly what Christman did.” I’ve been in the construction business in Southeast Michigan for 30 years and I have never seen a reputable construction manager on a publicly funded job steer a subcontract to themselves as brazenly as Christman did. I haven’t worked much with Granger, but they have a good reputation and there is no reason to believe that they would ever pull a stunt like that. I have dealt with Colasanti, extensively, mostly as a competitor. Colasanti is one of the best and most ethical contractors in Michigan and they would never, under any circumstances, do “exactly what Christman did” on the DDA parking deck concrete bids.

- Thomas D. Roelofs, Plymouth