Posted on 04/08/2008 9:47:25 AM PDT by mdittmar
A southeast Alabama roadbuilding firm has lost its low bid in Madison County because it failed to fill out a new form on illegal immigrant employment.
Wiregrass Construction's bid of about $3 million a year was shelved Monday by the county commission. The contract went to the next-lowest bidder, Reed Construction, which did fill out the form.
Wiregrass Construction President John Harper said Madison County would have saved about $200,000 a year with its low bid.
He said the company made an honest mistake when it overlooked the form, which certifies that the company does not employ illegal immigrants.
Some one will be unemployed.
Perhaps they “intentionally” overlooked the form because they didn’t want a legal record claiming they don’t use illegal labor.
Maybe that’s why they could lowball a bid some 3 million under their nearest competitor.
Illegals don’t just take jobs Americans don’t want....they take construction, road, trucking, restaurant, etc. jobs. All of those are viable jobs and some are very good jobs.
If they don't have such a process in place they should. Looks like they are going to be paying $200,000/year more than they should.
Maybe no review in place?,or maybe the company didn’t want to iron out the problem?
You got that right.
I would bet ou dollars to donuts that the company routinely employs illegal aliens, and knows full well that they would be setting themselves up for severe penalties if they filled out a form stating otherwise.
Sure...illegal alien labor insures that a company can have the lowest bid.
That’s why employers ought to be fined thousands of dollars for each illegal found at their work site the first time, and the second time, in addition to doubling the fines, their business should be pad-locked for 6 months. If there is a third time, they would be barred from doing business in that state.
I don’t believe for a moment that they overlooked that form. If I had to guess, I would say they purposely omitted it and hoped that it would be considered unnecessary if they had a low enough bid.
Where do you get that assumption?
There total bid was 3 mill - there's no mention of the next lowest bid amount.
I’ve sat through dozens and dozens of these bid contests, and they ALWAYS claim it was just a little clerical error, and they ALWAYS raise the issue about how it’s going to cost the people more.
The bid process, in addition to giving every company an equal chance of the getting the project, also allows the entity awarding the bid to see whether their potential vendor is capable of following instructions.
Well, it could be resolved if, when it was discovered that the otherwise successful bidder failed to fill out the form, they were given the opportunity to do so before the contract award became final. Then we’d know what the story was.
This is a classic contractor whine...If they can’t follow or fill out the simple documents in the bid process they are “non responsive” and thus their bid will be rejected.
I actually had a bid protest where the local big contractor went before the City Council and claimed that if they didn’t have to provide a bid bond, performance bond, pay prevailing wages, etc., then they could perform the job (the out of town contractor was $150,000 lower). I just laughed at them and told them it wasn’t my responsibility to pay them scads of extra money just so they could afford another moose hunting trip to Canada...
The out town contractor did a great job, didn’t change order us to death and still managed to make a tidy profit...
How well does the ability to navigate the red tape translate to the ability to perform the work being referenced?
Normally fairly well because it shows that a company can hire someone that knows how to do a job.
If they can't hire someone that can follow instructions well enough to fill out paperwork what makes you think their other employees will do any better at following the instructions on how to mix the concrete?
It is part of the contract the same as the plans and specifications. If they don’t have to abide by the contract then chances are pretty high that they won’t want to follow the plans and specs which always leads to additional claims, lawyer fees, and poor project in general...
You are correct. It says they lowballed it to the tune of $200,000 a year and not for 3 million. (It doesn’t say for how many years.)
Just asking. I don’t work with public works contracts, but have had to work with a lot of outside contractors in private enterprise. It’s been my experience that it’s a mistake to assume that any of them do everything equally well.
There tends to be a correlation between an inability to follow the bid instructions and a tendency to cut corners, inflate costs, or give you static during the work. The pros tend to be pros across the board. The real red flag is the guy who screws up the bid, then sues you when he doesn't get it.
One of the regular issues out here is that the bond rules require you to specify the amount of the bond in numbers, then also write it out. The requirement exists for the same reason you have to do it on checks. First question when somebody screws that up is, “have you ever done any work in California before”? Usually, the answer is ‘no’.
It’s funny how repetitive the appeals are. You could pretty much just cut one of them and paste it into the next slot on the agenda. Once in a while, the non-responsive bidder will bring some union fat-cat and a bunch of his members to plead his case. If there was any doubt before, at that point you immediately know they’re not from around here: all five of our Council members are conservatives.
Hmmm....Wiregrass Construction. Located near Ft. Rucker.
When I was at Ft. Rucker about a year ago, there was a contruction company on the Army base that had about 50 (presumably) illegals working on a project on the base. I saw them taking a break, sitting on the side of a hill. I was flabbergasted. How could this many get on the base undetected? Maybe they weren’t Mexican. Maybe they were Syrian or Iranian. Heck, I don’t know. Does the Army know?
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