TITLE
Recommendation to request City Manager to work with Financial Management and all applicable City Departments to report back within 180 days on the potential benefits, partnerships, and challenges of expanding Citywide development, construction, and building procurement processes to include opportunities for alternative methods of collaboration and partnership.
DISCUSSION
Traditionally, public agencies in California have long been restricted in the manner they can award public works construction projects. As a general rule, public agencies were obligated by competitive bidding statutes to award construction contracts to the lowest responsive, responsible bidder. This traditional project delivery method placed primary importance on cost, and restricted agencies from utilizing alternative project delivery methods available to the private sector that can drive down costs. In the end, these types of restrictions prohibit competition and limit our capability as a City in getting the best value out of our projects.
The best value of a project can be defined through an examination of prospective contractors against a range of pre-defined criteria. Values can be assigned to factors such as price, past performance, relevant experience, technical ability, sustainability, health and safety, innovation, resource availability, management skills and systems, proposed methodology, etc.
An increasing number of statutes have been enacted to allow public agencies to use alternative project delivery methods under certain circumstances. The advantages to using an alternative delivery method can include easier financing, guaranteed cost, risk reduction and efficiencies between planners, designers and builders.
In other words, alternative delivery can oftentimes surmount hurdles that the traditional plan-design-bid process can't, to achieve more desirable outcomes. Each method can have its advantages and drawbacks depending on the project and its goals. Because of that, it's...
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