And welcome to the city of Providence Board of Contract and Supply meeting, Monday, 08/25/2025. I'm madam for, could you please call us?
Courtney Hawkins. Present. Kyle Delgado.
Councilman Gonsalves is absent. Councilwoman Anthony is absent. Sarah Silveria. Present. Elaine Richard.
Present. Joseph Dakina. Present. Patricia Coyne Fade. Present.
Shamari Husband. Present. John Arzmanian.
Tyrell Stevens is absent. You have nine present and three absent. You have four.
I'd like to entertain a motion to elect myself chairperson of this meeting. Second. Motion made by director Richard, seconded by director Bellini. All in favor?
All opposed? If not, please let the record reflect that we are joined today by my vote, please see deputy city solicitor. So noted. I'd like to entertain a motion to go to section b, opening of bids. So moved.
Second. Motion made by director Delgado, seconded by director Richards all in favor? Aye. All those? Aye.
Have it. Section b, opening of bids. Item one, Department of Housing and Human Services on call temporary relocation provider. Four year contract. All bids.
This item is being extended to line 8225. K. Item two, Department of Public Property Catering Congress open enrollment, one year contract with three one year options. All business items being dropped. K.
Alright. Yes. That completes section b. Like to entertain a motion to go to section c advertisements.
Motion made by director Bellini, seconded by director Delgado. All in favor? Aye. All opposed. The ayes have it.
And I'd like to entertain a mosh oh, madam perk, do we have a walk on? We do.
We have a walk on advertisement from the city solicitor's office for appraisal services for defensive litigation expiring 12/31/2026 with two one year options for renewal. This will be an open enrollment, and this will be beginning to open on 09/22/2025.
Okay. I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the advertisements in section c as well as the walk on advertisement from law departments. Second. Seconded. I'm sorry.
Motion moved by director the Pena, seconded by director Richards. All in favor? Aye. All of those? Yes.
I'd like an I'm gonna get a motion to go to section a for review. Second.
The recommendation of, I think, T. Gay and Bond, the third lowest bidder here for the, the Cathedral Square by engineering process. Do everybody here from planning who could speak towards that? Hey, Jess. How's it going?
Just a quick question on, like, the evaluation, the technical evaluations that you guys had. No problem. Just if you can give us a rundown on the evaluation, I I see it in the the paperwork that there is a criteria, here that was a technical evaluation for, the bidders. And can you just run us through, like, how you guys scored this and how you guys arrived at the third lowest bidder here?
Can you ask before you start, can you just identify yourself with the I'm
Jess Lance, director of special projects for the planning department. So within the RFP, we have laid out our selection criteria that is available to anyone who's bidding on the project or looking at it. Really, what we look for heavily in our evaluation through these projects is the project approach and understanding. And once we get through that technical evaluation, we made through, you know, the project schedule breakdown, how the teams plan on approaching the project, and whether we feel like they have a good understanding of what we're looking for. We'll score them based on that.
And then as stated in the evaluation, there's if a firm has met the technical score, they'll come in for interviews. And then based on interviews, depending on, you know, how they're reacting to questions that were given, and making sure that we all know that we're working with them and really understand what they're looking for through the process. So that's the main, way that we evaluate these, and then, of course, cost comes into consideration as well. And so, you know, based on reading through the proposals, the interviews that we did, and making sure that everybody had all the forms, really were, making sure that they were responding to everything that that's how we got to tie a bond as our preferred.
And what was the threshold for your your scoring?
Okay. So that eliminated two vendors on the bottom, Beta and and Ray, Dunix, LA. So that left you with T Day. I I don't know if I'm saying that right, but, Horsey went in and then then Copeland. Right.
The awarded vendor here, their score is interesting. Can you just walk me through? They have a zero for completed forms.
If I aren't sure correctly, the the the NDE one of the times, that's the thing that
That was a missing document? And was there any other missing documents on there besides that? No. Okay. And, I mean, this has been a discussion that we've we've talked about plenty of times, but that MBE document is, by Charter, a goal, not a requirement.
Right? Correct. So that's not a ground for us to be able to disqualify, which is why Ben is moving forward with them. Is that correct? Okay.
Still want to see that change, but I know it's a larger discussion. Just have one more question about them. They had a technical score of 79, which is below the other two that met threshold, but they had a 20 in the interview score. Can you kinda walk me through how they kinda have a lower technical score or scored so well on the interview?
I think, you know, it's hard to really get a strong understanding of a team just from the paper. Mhmm. And that's why we provide the opportunity for interviews so that we can actually talk through everything that we're looking for. And then we, like, get that feel for, a, working with the firm and especially getting that feel for projects that maybe they've provided some information for that they've worked on before that, you know, when we're doing the interview, that's a really good time for us to get all of the detail, and help us to understand, you know, Providence is a little bit quirky. It can be a little weird working, you know, different permits and that kind of thing.
And through the interview process, we can get a feel for how firms have dealt with similar situations a little bit better than this quarter. And so, really, this term advice rose to the top through that process.
K. No further questions on my end.
Thank you. Do you have any other items for you review?
Yes. Item number three, this is in connection with, item number 31. So I'm gonna move to 31 really quick and read that out loud and then move to item number three. Item number 31, it says date of 08/14/2025 requesting approval to pay Able Industrial Sweeping Inc. For outstanding invoices for the period of 07/13/2025 till 08/07/2025 for daily sweeping services citywide.
The amount is needed to pay the remaining invoices submitted for street sweeping services, which has now been, suspended until the company is recommended from the last street sweeping bid process for a total amount not to exceed $64,000. Are we why are we going with an approval to pay on on the '31 here?
Because their contracts have expired, but they were still performing services after the expiration of the contract on the phone, I guess, a month to month basis as a matter of past practice, which I put a stop to. Mhmm. So I became aware of it because there wasn't a program contract in place at that point because I was it had been in practice to just kinda keep doing it again until the contract was in place. We do have our own street sweepers at TBW, so I thought that hopefully, relative to a short period of time between the aspiration of that contract and a new contract, we could just kinda struggle ourselves. Mhmm.
But in the meantime, they did perform work that they need to.
So for about a month, a little bit less, they'll perform over a brow pate on checking. Okay.
To clarify, this has been referred to finance, so we're approving that today.
Sure. But just in connection to item number three in the front, this is the same company recommending, Able Industrial Sweeping, the second lowest bidder, because the lowest bidder did not meet all the qualifications. So, basically, lining them up to get the award back again this year. Can you tell me why the lowest bidder on this one didn't meet all the qualifications?
Sure. So it was a bit. Mhmm. And the lowest bidder in terms of the cost, their their on the their their machinery is older, and the contract the RFP requires that the machines of any that are first to make the ex for excellent condition throughout the term of the contract. And our mechanics had concerns that while they were okay today, they were much older than the second to lowest fitter, his machines.
And we didn't have confidence that they would we thought they were a different. They're even not confidence that they would make it to the end of the contract because they weren't as new as the sheets from this company.
