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The selection of any successful Proponent will be by Kingston City Council upon review and recommendation made to it by the Technical Evaluation Committee.

Comment: For prudence, probity, transparency, it is always a good practice to have a qualified third party, not a part of the process to date, evaluate and make the recommendations. This should also ensure that the process is fair. As it currently stands, Page 7 indicates that the "Technical Evaluation Committee will be made up of representatives from the Steering Committee, the LVEC Project Director, City Staff and other consultants as required". The City should be taken to task for not ensuring an open, fair, and unbiased assessment of all the Proponents submissions.

 

Comment:  On Page 10:  The City has tasked the Proponents to provide a facility and that it

be designed as a signature building recognizing its inner action with a regenerating historical urban downtown setting

and furthermore

to reflect and enhance the urban fabric of the area.

and on and on and on.

Baird Sampson of Neuert Architects was commissioned by the City in January 2006 to extend an earlier study titled "Urban Design Guidelines for the North Block Central Business District".  Their findings, guidelines, and recommendations are attached as a document to the RFP to assist the Proponents with their design. However, in the Evaluation Criteria Table on Page 7, they are willing to allocate a maximum of 10 points out of the 600 or 1.67% for Proponents who adhere and respect those guidelines.  

Comment: The Performance Specifications permit an incredible amount of leeway in terms of design and construction. They essentially require the contractor to meet the requirements of the OBC.  So much for a signature, state of the art, classy facility.

Comment: All the proposals should be evaluated on technical merit in the first instance. Only then should the price be made available to the evaluators. Access to the Proponent’s cost figure for the delivery of the facility very often has a tendency to sway the evaluators. In essence, this should be a two envelope system. We all know just how important the price component will be for the City given the lack of financing available. 

Comment: The Evaluation Criteria Table asks for a separate price for the LEED component of the work. Incorporating LEED criteria is integral to the design component and is very difficult to price as a standalone component. One wonders if it might become an item for removal for at the negotiation stages in order for the City to meet budget requirements. LEED also has a tendency to extend design and construction timelines as a great deal of effort is required to obtain a Silver designation in LEED. If they are so pro LEED they would have required the proponent to name their sustainable design consultant and insist on people with LEED accreditation.  

Comment: Note in the General Terms and Conditions that the City has stated that they are not liable for any costs incurred by the Proponents in preparing their submissions. This seems to be somewhat at odds with the Honorarium section on Page 8 of the RFP wherein the City has promised a $50,000.00 sum for those proponents who score a minimum of 400 out of a possible 600 points. I guess the City’s legal/finance folks missed that contradiction in their review of the RFP. Achieving a score of 400 out of 600 is very subjective; the submission requirements and evaluation guidelines are sketchy at best. Our guess is that all the successful Proponents will have no problem achieving the minimum score.  

Comment: There is only one thing that the City really knows for sure it wants:  they have single sourced all seating for the arena. This is roughly a $0.75 million dollar expenditure that is directed to a single company in the States. So much for getting best value for money. Single sourcing flies in the face of prudent expenditure of taxpayers money. With the remainder of the performance specifications being short on detail, one wonders why the arena seating has to be single sourced!

 

Comment: The existing environmental constraints could be very large in terms of additional cost, remediation, and the construction schedule.

Comment: Archaeological issues, most notably Fort Frontenac, may be an issue, and could lead to delays in the project delivery or project gold-plating, and hence cost overruns.

 

Comment: The milestone project schedule has one glaring omission. The successful proponent goes straight from award to design development. What happened to the concept stage?

 

General Comment:  Design/build projects tend to relinquish the ability of the City to control the end product, particularly in the absence of good performance specifications, which is the case in this RFP. Design/Build projects are time driven with design and construction being essentially concurrent operations. The City has not indicated that they will retain an advocate architect to represent and protect their interests. This document as presented clearly puts the contractor in the driver’s seat. Any changes or revisions required by the City post submission will be very expensive. Lily Inglis had it right when she said the City is going about the process in a backwards fashion.