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On August 13^th  I wrote about the Beaver Landing Reconstruction project (“They Forgot to Lick the Envelope“) and that the three low bidders were NW Kodiak Construction, TFT Construction, and Brix Paving.  However, the City Council was going to have to review the bids because of some “irregularities” which resulted because the low bidder, NW Kodiak, forgot to seal their bid and it was received one minute after the bid time. 

This past Friday I called Glen Crinklaw, the Assistant Public Works Director of Columbia County Public Works to find out what happened with the bid, but I had to leave a message.  He was kind enough to email me with the information and said, “Betty, Columbia County’s Board of Commissioners made the decision to waive the bid irregularities. Their conclusion was that the specific bid irregularities were minor and did not present an adverse impact on the integrity of the competitive bidding process. So, they gave staff direction to send out a Notice of Intent to Award naming NW Kodiak Construction as selected bidder.”

I decided to take a look at the specifications book for the project and read the Instructions to Bidders. Section 4  stated, “Bids for the work described will be received…”   It didn’t actually say that the bids had to be sealed, so I guess not having the bid sealed wasn’t such a big deal anyway.  But, a line in Section 14 answered my other question, “The County will not consider late bids, withdrawals, or modifications except as permitted in OAR 137-049-0350 or OAR 137-049-0390.”  (Oregon Administrative Rules) 

Out of curiosity I checked out both rules and found that OAR 137-049-0305, “Mistakes”, says that the Contracting Agency can make corrections in clerical errors that a bidder might make, such as, typographical mistakes, error in extending unit prices, transposition errors, arithmetic errors, etc.  It also says that the Contracting Agency can waive an insignificant mistake. OAR 137-049-0390 addresses the integrity of bidders and I know that NW Kodiak is a great construction company with business ethics. 

Looks to me like all the bases were covered and there shouldn’t be any repercussions from the other bidders.  I just didn’t know that something like that could happen.  Maybe it’s not that uncommon, or is this something that happens a lot? Let me know.