Follow the Competitive Bid Law: Design-Bid-Build

Prison Construction

Alabama plans to build and renovate prisons

That’s great news… now, let’s bid the job and get it done!

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History shows that the traditional Design-Bid-Build method provides the owner (The State) the best product at the best price the market can bear while meeting deadline requirements.  The current competitive bid law requires all public works projects to be built using the Design-Bid-Build method.  There is no reason to circumvent this proven, transparent and efficient method for public works projects.

The Competitive Bid Law (design-bid-build) provides the taxpayers with safe and efficient facilities at the lowest price that qualified, competitive bidders can offer.

DEFINITIONS:

Competitive Bid Law:  Design the project then bid the project out and then build the project.

Design-Build:  Eliminate the bid process, eliminate the competition.

About 150 years ago, our forefathers bestowed the competitive bidding concept on us in order to curb corruption, inefficiency, and mismanagement by government officials. This is called Design-Bid-Build.

WHAT’S GOING ON?

• The Administration is pushing design-build (circumvent the bid law).

• On Feb 1, 2021, Governor Kay Ivey entered into separate lease agreements with CoreCivic that they spent approximately 3 years trying to pull together.  All aspects of this fell apart this year (2021).

• The State has already paid Hoar Program Management $20M in expenses related to prison construction and presumably only 20% of design plans are completed.

• Certainly, the State would not have entered into lease agreements without a valid set of documents to justify lease costs. (you always see the layout of an apartment before you sign a lease and you wouldn’t lease a car without seeing complete specifications).

• The lessor would need design plans to estimate construction costs so that a lease price could be established.

• If no complete plans are available then those who have built prisons before should have some plans that the State can purchase and review/ amend for proper compliance with code and state law.

• This would provide an opportunity for legislators to have complete control, review and oversite of this entire project which would be competitively bid and would provide the important transparency to the tax payers.

• Architectural drawings can be delivered as a prototype which can be modified for local conditions. This would significantly reduce construction time.