July 6, 2011
Council issues sludge
tender
by Vance Gutzman
It took some last-minute tweaking, but Deep River council has clarified
the terms of its sludge haulage contract to the point where everything
is pretty well cut and dried.
Council met last week to approve the issuance of a tender for the
extraction, haulage and disposal of treated sludge from its sewage
treatment plant.
It's actually the town's second kick at awarding a contract for that
work.
As has been reported in the NRT, the town sent out a request for
submissions earlier this spring for the biosolids contract, and two
bids were received by the May 6 deadline.
The town's public works manager, Khizar Hayat, had recommended council
award the contract to P&G Pumping, at a price of $21.75 per cubic
metre, despite the fact the other bidder on the job, Thomas Pumping
Service, had submitted a lower price of $13 per cubic metre,
Hayat based his recommendation on an inherited set of quote selection
criteria - a point system based on six factors in which P&G Pumping
out-scored Thomas Pumping by a margin of 83.18 to 65.
That selection criteria, however, came under fire from some members of
council, prompting council to suspend that procurement process and
re-tender the job.
The town then went and drafted a new tender, with the aid of its
municipal solicitor, who was in attendance at last week's meeting when
council was set to vote on a resolution approving the issuance of said
tender.
George LeConte was there only because he had, just late that afternoon,
taken a look at the tender document and discovered there were some
discrepancies between the document council was set to vote on and the
document he had helped the town prepare.
"I learned today that my work had been revised without my knowledge,"
LeConte told council.
One of the solicitor's main bones of contention with the revised
document was that it laid out two different cost parameters for
prospective contractors - one with a unit price per cubic metre of
sludge extracted, hauled and spread, and another for the disposal of
sludge in a form other than land application.
LeConte argued that his original draft tender remedied that second
scenario by stating that the extra costs would be settled by
negotiating a mutually satisfactory price revision of the unit price
per cubic metre.
Failing that, the town and the contractor would resolve the matter
through simple arbitration.
LeConte cited a number of other areas where the revised draft tender
differed from the one he had drawn up for the town, ranging from
insurance requirements to the wording of the town's acceptance.
"If I had not come out here tonight, I fear a mistake may have been
repeated," LeConte said.
"This is a tender. It means what it says."
LeConte left the meeting to return to his offices to revise the revised
draft tender document, both to meet his own legal satisfaction and as
well as some changes to the wording of the document which were
suggested by members of council.
Upon his return, council passed a resolution approving the revised
revised document.
The controversial selection criteria, which prompted the original
procurement process to be suspended, will not be used this time around,
when the tenders close in two weeks time.
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