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Board member presses staff for selection details on roughly $3.5 million engineering contract
Summary
At the Jan. 12 City of Denton Public Utilities Board meeting, a board member asked city staff to explain why final selection criteria were not included in materials for a roughly $3.5 million engineering services contract; staff said the city used a prequalified list and evaluates firms for each project.
At its Jan. 12 meeting, the City of Denton Public Utilities Board approved a consent agenda item that had been pulled for discussion after a board member asked for details about the selection process for an engineering services contract.
David Brown, water utilities project manager, outlined the procurement approach, saying, "The selection process was used the 82 13, prequalified engineering selection that we had already been approved through PB and council." Lori Hill, the city purchasing manager, added that the city maintains a prequalified list of engineering firms and periodically issues a request for qualifications to populate that list: "For engineering services we have to do a request for qualifications... we do a pre qualified list... every 3 years we send out a request for qualifications and we qualify firms in different sections."
A board member who had pulled the item questioned why the final selection criteria and scoring were not included in the agenda materials, saying, "But it's not a small quantity of money and it's for an important project... Well, 3 and a half million bucks, I guess I'd kinda like to know." The board member asked whether the selection was one firm chosen from a pool of prequalified firms and requested more transparency in future agenda information summaries.
Hill and Brown said the prequalification is conducted on a recurring basis and that staff evaluates qualifications for each project, sometimes requesting additional materials from firms before choosing the most qualified. Hill said the city’s internal evaluation is informal for work drawn from that prequalified list and that detailed scoring is not typically included in the agenda information summaries (AISs).
After the discussion the board moved and seconded approval of the pulled item; the chair called a voice vote and the motion carried.
The board did not specify additional documentation to be provided back to the board at this meeting; the exact contract amount and the detailed scoring used by staff were not provided in the public discussion.
