This article, USC nixes bids; donor chooses architect: ‘Unprecedented’ move come sin late stage of bidding process, from The State, in Columbia, SC, shows again that decisions on purchasing or commissioning architectural, engineering and construction services are often based more on relationships than objective and “fair” qualifications in open competitions.
It seems that four architects had been competing for the work and had invested more than $100,000 each in preparing bid documentation. Trouble is, the major financial donor for the project preferred one of the four finalists — one who was not going to win the job, at least on merit — and pulled strings. Guess who won the commission?
You can read the entire story here, but this excerpt gives you an idea about the feelings involved:
In a move that’s been called unprecedented, USC canceled all bids to hire an architect for its new $90 million Moore School of Business so a donor could pick a design firm of her own choosing.
While no state spending rules were broken, four Columbia firms and their national partners spent months of labor and an estimated $100,000 each hoping to win the project before the school abruptly canceled the bids in a two-sentence memo sent April 2.
Instead, the business school’s private foundation will pay an estimated $4 million or more to a New York firm chosen by the school’s benefactor, Darla Moore.
Moore, a Lake City financier for whom the school is named, sits on the foundation board. The firm chosen, Raphael Vinoly Architects, was a finalist for the contract but was not going to win it, a source close to the bidding told The State newspaper.
The architect’s fee will be a gift from the foundation, which is allowed under state procurement rules, according to the S.C. Budget & Control Board.
But the head of the S.C. chapter of the American Institute of Architects called the last-minute canceling of the bids “unprecedented.”
And one frequent critic of the university called it “an end run around the procurement process.”
“People shouldn’t deal with the university if they don’t play by the rules,” said Ashley Landess, president of the S.C. Policy Council.
In this situation, I think the morally correct solution is for the university foundation to pay the unsuccessful applicants for their time and effort in preparing the bid documentation but of course the university/foundation probably doesn’t have a legal obligation so the architects caught in the ‘end round’ are out of pocket. I imagine the pain is greatest for the firm that would have won the competition if the donor hadn’t intervened at the last minute.
But wait. How do you define “fair” for services such as architecture when subjective and intuitive evaluations are necessarily a part of the story and where this qualitative rather than quantitative measuring process applies especially in federal/public works. Even though theoretically points might be based on an open and fair system, do previous relationships/friendships and connections not have an important — usually crucial — role in the decision-making process? I think so.
I think we can all see that the process of winning AEC work is never as simple and straightforward as we would dream and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if you can learn the rules of the road and where and when to proceed with expensive and challenging bid submissions. Although I don’t fault the competing architects for feeling some anger about the situation, they could have used public data to foresee the relationship between the successful architect and donor. They then have a more difficult challenge in their go no-go evaluation. Do they bid the work, knowing that someone has an inside track, in part to maintain relationships with the university for other projects, or do they politely decline to enter the competition?
If you expect me to provide a clear and unequivocal response here, you will wait a while. Your comments here or on the Construction Marketing Ideas Linkedin forum are welcome, however.