Contractor knocks youth camp bid process

Jeff Schweers

Tuesday, Sept. 16, 1997 | 10:54 a.m.

A botched bidding process and sketchy job specifications have left residents of the Spring Mountain Youth Camp at Mount Charleston with half the sidewalks and stairs they were supposed to get.

"This was a job that was not well-specified, and had several inconsistencies," Clark County General Services Director Earl Hawkes said. "We should have thrown out all bids and started all over again."

That upset Dave Collins, an owner of the Patagonia Co., who had bid and lost on the job to the XLA Group. When he checked on the job a year later, he found it had not been finished -- a fact he brought up to the County Commission last month.

"My basic complaint is it's tough to be legit when this goes on," Collins said. "Half or less got done and they still got paid."

The original invitation that went out in August 1996 asked for bids from contractors to demolish, remove and replace 3,000 linear feet of concrete sidewalk, stairs and handrails at the the mountaintop boot camp for juvenile offenders. The engineer's estimated cost was $75,000.

Three contractors submitted bids: the XLA Group at $69,000, McComb Contracting at $94,000 and the Patagonia Co. at $158,500.

As lowest bidder, XLA won the contract. It was only after winning the job that the company pointed out the discrepancy between the specs and the drawing, which didn't show the stairs.

Normal procedure is to point out discrepancies during the pre-bid conference, when all potential bidders are present, Hawkes said.

"There was a misunderstanding as to how many sidewalks and stairs were to be replaced," said Shirley Aoyama, a county purchasing analyst who prepared the bid invitation. "That wasn't clear on the drawings."

Hawkes also said not enough money was budgeted for the work described.

"Nobody looked closely enough to see there wasn't enough money to do the job, that there was more than $75,000 worth of work," Hawkes said.

At that point, Hawkes said, all bids should have been rejected and the process started again. Instead, a change order was issued, reducing the scope of the work XLA had to complete, dropping some sidewalks and handicapped access. Those items may be folded into a larger renovation of the youth camp approved by the Nevada Legislature, Hawkes said.

Looking back, Hawkes said, Patagonia probably should have been given the job because its bid covered the full scope of the project.

When asked why he didn't restart the bidding process, Hawkes said the county's contract manager wanted to get the job done before winter for the sake of the kids at the youth camp.

"This was a bad decision for the right reasons," Hawkes said.