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The city of Portland wants to find an architect to design a new Fire Station 21 to replace an aging facility near the Hawthorne Bridge. In May the city was on its way, and issued an intent to award a $700,000 architecture contract to up-and-coming local firm Whelton Architecture.

Less than a month later, the award was rescinded in response to a letter of protest submitted by one of the four firms shortlisted for the project. The protest, filed by Carleton Hart Architecture, focused on concerns about the solicitation process used to select the firm that won the final contract.

The city took a step back in the evaluation process, and said that the four shortlisted firms would be brought in to re-interview. Now chief procurement services manager Barbara Gibson says the city is taking yet another step back, replacing the evaluation committee altogether and re-considering all 10 of the proposals initially submitted in response to the project’s RFP in April.

The situation with Fire Station 21 is part of a trend, albeit an extreme example, Gibson said. In the past two years, the city’s procurement services staff has seen firms in the architecture, engineering and construction industries file more protests than they did in better economic times.

鈥淥ver the last year or two we have seen more protests, mainly in construction proposals,鈥� Gibson said. 鈥淏ecause of the economy, people have chosen to do that.鈥�

鈥淭here hasn’t been a case like (Fire Station 21) for a long time,鈥� said Patti Mertz, a marketing and business development consultant for architecture firms. Mertz said that in better economic times, firms might be more likely to walk away from an RFP process they think is unfair because they have other jobs opportunities.

鈥淵ou can move ever-forward when the phone keeps ringing,鈥� Mertz said. 鈥淎 few years ago, firms didn’t know if they needed a marketing person because they had so much work. Now, they’re fighting over every RFP that shows up.鈥�

Gibson said dealing with appeals does take up a good chunk of time鈥攚hen a protest is filed, the solicitation process is essentially put on hold until the issue is resolved. However, though city departments and bureaus that deal with procurement have faced staff cutbacks in recent years, Gibson won’t complain about the workload.

鈥淚t really doesn’t matter how much time it takes,鈥� Gibson said. 鈥淚t matters that the protest is reviewed. We take them very seriously.鈥�

The situation with Fire Station 21 has been a particularly serious situation for the city. After interviewing the project’s shortlisted firms, the evaluation committee named the winning firm as Whelton Architecture, a small firm that also recently won a design competition for a firefighter’s memorial, which will be located adjacent to the new station.

On May 24, William Hart, a principal at Carleton Hart Architecture, sent a letter of protest questioning the process and calculations that led to the award for Fire Station 21.

During a pre-proposal meeting for the project, city staff told firms that once a short list had been selected for the project, the shortlisted firms would 鈥渟tart from zero鈥� at the interview phase. The staff said that points assigned during the proposal phase were to be kept separate from interview considerations.

In his protest, Hart alleged that documents from the selection process showed proposal-phase scores relating to diversity and cost were carried through to the interview phase and adjusted for some firms. Hart said the evaluation committee asked no questions about diversity and cost during the Carleton Hart interview and the issues were not discussed.

Gibson said the 鈥渟tarting from zero鈥� answer at the pre-application meeting was not consistent with the process laid out in the RFP, which states that points will carry over from proposal to interview phases.

To clear up the process, Gibson said that the process will be backtracked all the way to the initial evaluation process. The seats on the five-member evaluation committee will be filled with all new members.

鈥淲e try really hard to be clean and fair,鈥� Gibson said. 鈥淭o bring in a new evaluation committee and (re-evaluate) starting with the written proposals, seemed cleaner.鈥�

The new committee will independently score written proposals. If there is no single frontrunner after the proposals are scored, the committee will bring in a short list of candidates for interviews.

Gibson said this is the first time she’s seen the city go so far back to reappoint an evaluation committee.

The RFP process is subjective and different evaluators will quantify firms’ qualifications in different ways. In the case of Fire Station 21, the issues with fairness in the proposal process went beyond subjectivity, however.

鈥淚 really admire the architect that steps up,鈥� Mertz said. 鈥淚t’s a public agency run by tax dollars. It should be fair.鈥�

William Hart and Whelton Architecture’s Aaron Whelton both declined to comment for this story.