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Cook County committee approves contract authorization for demolition and renovation after procurement questions; officers to provide further RFQ/RFP details
Summary
The committee approved authorization for the chief procurement officer to contract with Epstein and Sons International Incorporated for demolition/renovation services after questions about use of an RFQ and a roughly two-year procurement timeline; the procurement officer said he would follow up with dates and respondent counts.
The Cook County Asset Management Committee voted on March 11 to authorize the chief procurement officer to enter into a contract with Epstein and Sons International Incorporated for architecture and engineering services related to demolition and renovation in divisions 4 and 5.
Vice Chair Aguilar moved the authorization and Commissioner Britton seconded; the chair called for a roll call and the motion passed after a final tally reported as eight ayes and one absence for Commissioner Moore.
Before the vote, a commissioner asked for the record whether the firm name on the contract had any relation to pending federal investigations. Chief Procurement Officer Raffi Sarafian answered that the procurement office runs background checks on proposed contractors before bringing contracts to the board and that nothing had come up in their checks. “We run our contracts before we bring them to you, the board. We run them through background checks and nothing has come up,” Sarafian said.
Commissioners also pressed county staff on why the county used an RFQ (qualifications-based) process rather than an RFP and why the evaluation process appeared to span approximately two years. One commissioner said the timeframe—about two years between the RFQ appearing on the county buying plan and the contract—was “way too long” for a county procurement and expressed concern that the delay could have narrowed competition or increased price. Sarafian explained that RFQs focus on qualifications and are common for architecture and engineering services, and that price is typically negotiated after a qualifications-based selection. He said he did not have exact dates or respondent counts available at the meeting and would provide them after consulting his staff.
The committee approved the contract authorization; staff committed to follow up with the exact RFQ advertisement and evaluation dates and the number of respondents to the solicitation.
