On November 16th I posted an article blasting the AOC’s decision to extend the contracts of the previously unlicensed contractors without legitimate competition for them. At the start of December, the AOC announced that an RFP was put up on courtinfo to do just that. I’ve taken the liberty to forward the RFP to construction and engineering experts to weigh in on the RFP so that I can report back to you on it.
What immediately stands out to them is that this is a ten year winner take all contract in each of the three service areas and that no one company can provide all of the services listed without working as part of a coalition of other service providers or subcontracting everything out to others.
They laughed when they saw that the AOC was actually asking for cost plus rates in the RFP and suggesting that the AOC believes they might be able to save money by choosing this option and pointedly asked “Did the idiots that produced this thing just leave war zone contracting in the middle east?”
I should have a few more comments about this flawed RFP by the end of the week but in the meantime, I wish to see others weigh in on it. What do you think about the aoc’s new “conceptual delivery of services” to which we will be married to for the next 10 years?
Since this thing “wasn’t vetted or put out for public comment” I figure this is as good of a place as any to vet the proposal and comment on it.
Judicial Council Watcher 
judicialcouncilwatcher
December 4, 2010
Comments via e-mail from “A court worker”
“That RFP is 80+ pages of general bull contract speak verbage that is really outlined to allow them to assemble a crew of unknowns (with a big blank check) and then sail off with no means or tools needed for knowing where they expect to go or how long they’ll be at sea. There were so many blank TBD pages it’s a joke. They don’t even have the correct addresses for (a certain counties) court buildings in the appendix, so I’d assume the others are not any more accurate. They have the review teams stacked with an OCCM majority and court representation minority because they have the opinion that only they know what is best for the courts.”
And “The RFP has little to no representation for a qualified court facility manager and the AOC wants it kept that way. Those who know less can’t question the captain and his officers, because they haven’t sailed before.”
And “Each County Court needs to have at least one qualified facility person in place to control what their court considers the priority projects, not have them dictated by either the AOC or Team Jacobs. (This) subject came up all the time (in a certain identifying meeting with the AOC) and the AOC tried to pass over on it. Only the person who has to live daily with the buildings and the occupants can determine what is really needed.”
“A court worker” promises to provide more commentary when they have time.
Edited to add my own personal comment: I wonder how much sailing those flyboys in OCCM have actually done themselves….
JusticeCalifornia
December 4, 2010
Judicial Council Watcher
This RFP is way outside my area of expertise but I have some practical questions:
Under this proposal will reputable local people/entities/businesses be used for operation and maintainence of county courthouses?
I ask because locals are often considered more efficient, attentive, convenient, competitively/appropriately priced, knowledgeable about the facility in question and accountable to the court, county, and taxpayers for the quality of their work.
judicialcouncilwatcher
December 4, 2010
The answer to your question is “no”. The AOC is looking for the biggest DOD contractor it can find and small family related businesses are out.
Michael Paul
December 4, 2010
I witnessed what was going on with OCCM’s contracting practices vis-a-vis the so called ‘service providers’. I know firsthand the lack of strategic and technical planning undertaken thus far to manage the entire inventory of buildings. The service providers have always known little to nothing about the technology involved to such a degree that the AOC’s office of court construction & management sends dozens of them to all expense paid training every year.
In a draft building management system policy manual I worked on with OCCM on last year , OCCM actually suggested that they would be developing a comprehensive training and certification program run by the AOC for the benefit of the service providers. The issue with this is that most of the people who have gotten AOC training walked away from the service provider for greener pastures after they got the AOC paid training. I suggested that they break up professional services and construction from the guy who changes lightbulbs and filters and empties ashtrays (for 75.00 apiece) (boots on the ground) and bid these out directly – and manage them directly. Instead of paying someone to learn, hire someone that knows.
When I review this proposal, my first impression is that the proposal is woefully incomplete and was rushed out to RFP. It lacks any defined strategy for managing 500+ buildings and comes up with “concepts” to manage buildings for the next ten years. One that is largely undefined in an 81 page proposal full of TBD. Based on this years’ expenditures, the contract has a potential value of over a half billion dollars over ten years. I have previously suggested to the AOC that this be broken up into two different functions consisting of local maintenance boots on the ground, those that may even report to the local court and can draw resources from the AOC and its contractors, rather than give the whole shooting match to company “A” who relies on everyone but themselves to get the task accomplished and adds a handsome management fee and performance based compensation to the whole enchilada, not just their small part.
I have observed OCCM’s own employees beat down and berated by their management for even the suggestion that their service providers were anything less than par excellance coming to you at a good value and have even been beat down myself for suggesting the AOC was getting burned by the “Service Providers”. They are been compelled by their management to surpress unfavorable ratings that would disqualify the service providers from performance based compensation and I have heard that management has awarded fictitious bonus points to ensure that they qualify. Those willing to criticize the service providers, such as Jon Wintermeyer and myself, who have front line first hand experience with them and the knowledge to back it up, even moreso than the OCCM management directing the activity – and many others of like mind – find themselves, ourselves ‘uninvited’ to the meetings. Uninvited to review the plans. Uninvited to the process. OCCM employees are largely silenced and warned to tow the party line, unable to make that last write-up that nearly every one of them would like to make that would terminate the headache, terminate the hassle and terminate the sole-source manipulation and overcharging of these service providers. They all smell the rot of special interests at work and can’t say a thing about it if they want to keep their jobs.
Had I been fortunate enough to be wearing the shoes of Mr. Fred Stetson, all of those buildings would be interconnected, monitored and managed from a redundant command infrastructure already employed by the AOC and the courts. It has been something I have placed on the table for 5 long years only to be told that the service providers know better than I do, regardless of how many times the AOC or the local court watches them fall on their face. And the AOC would be directly managing the work done – not a service provider.
“Hey gentlemen, this is the train engineer, I’d like to call your attention to the brick wall across the tracks about 5 miles ahead”
One must understand that one makes their money in the construction industry in the arena of loose ends, previously unidentified issues and change orders. This RFP, in my professional opinion is not ready for prime time, provides no cohesive long term “work towards” strategy that would put all three vendors on the same page with the AOC and the courts and work towards lowering the total cost of ownership of the entire real estate portfolio. It encourages a free-for-all, allowing the vendors to submit thousands of more expensive definitions and changes and amendments at a later date – spread over the next 10 years. It is a vehicle for expensive sole-source construction and maintenance largely managed by the service provider. As such, it appears to be no different than the current model.
SpecialInterestsAtWork
December 8, 2010
This RFP has been custom tailored so that only the largest government contractors can bid on it. Many of the requirements underpinning the underlying contract can currently be provided by only one entity.
This RFP is a charade to ensure that Jacobs or a subsidiary is the primary, if not the only qualified bidder. The RFP is written to discourage bidders that don’t have all the resources developed by Jacobs (and dearly paid for by the taxpayers) during the time that Jacobs has been maintaining the contract.
Jacobs has had plenty of fore-notice to pre-position themselves for this RFP with insider knowledge of it that no one else was privy to and has re-shaped its organizational relationship with both the AOC and its subcontractor vendors to respond in a big way in the very short time alloted to respond. Jacobs management is telling their own people that this is already a done deal and they have not yet submitted a proposal or responded to the RFP.
Please note that Jacobs or its affiliates and subsidiaries are not specifically excluded from submitting a bid, even though they owe the AOC tens of millions of dollars according to the AG suit.
judicialcouncilwatcher
December 8, 2010
While I’ll be commenting more when I get my responses back from the professionals, my take is that there is not enough language to exclude the previously unlicensed vendors. What lanugage there is regarding this seems to leave things up to the discretion of OCCM management. This would be the same OCCM management that extended the contracts to the previously unlicensed contractors in the first place. This would be the same OCCM management that is covering up the fact that “Team Jacobs” was the DBA of Jacobs and ABM when they were working in the courts in some flawed belief that they are limiting the damages against them for only two years as opposed to everything paid to them during the entire time they were doing business in the courts as “Team Jacobs”.
Who stands to benefit from this cover-up? Let’s analyze this for a moment.
1. ABM stands to benefit from this cover-up moreso than any other entity. ABM represents a vast majority of “Team Jacobs”, to use a term Mr. Paul has used, “boots on the ground” and was doing all of the subcontracting up until early 2010. To subcontract, one has to have a general contractors license. They lacked that license, yet acted in the capacity of a general contractor on behalf of Jacobs and the AOC and issued all subcontracts and payments to those subcontractors. They are not named in any AG or AOC lawsuit.
2. The damages by disclaiming the DBA of “Team Jacobs” were pre-planned to be substantially limited and allows them to put forth the “Substantial Compliance” argument, which, by legislation and various court rulings is currently an invalid precedence. However, substantial compliance is a good “out of court” settlement between the vendor and the AOC. Nonetheless, why would the AOC wish to limit damages against a wrongdoer? This brings us to the next bullet point.
3. As your title implies Special Interests At Work, special interests that likely include kickbacks in one form or another are at work to be the motivating factor to limit these damages and the claims against the vendors.
Michael Paul
December 8, 2010
The underlying basis of my taxpayer lawsuit.
AOC – Declare the total amount of money spent since the inception of these contracts. Admit the existence of “Team Jacobs” and that you did tens of millions of dollars worth of business with “Team Jacobs” because the avalanche of documentation to the contrary is an offense to the intelligence of every Californian.
Declare that you are filing suit for the full amount since the inception of the contracts and past the extensions of the contracts and do not extend another contract to these “previously unlicensed” vendors, their subsidiaries or any affiliates. I think that these are all fair requests that a taxpayer can make of their government when it is clear that their government is engaged in highly questionable contracting activities that are costing the taxpayers too much.
judicialcouncilwatcher
December 19, 2010
From a contractor that frequently does business with the AOC:
“It certainly looks like this RFP was written for the benefit of Jacobs. I also wonder what the “M” in “OCCM” is for. It looks to me that they are seeking to contract out ALL of their responsibilities. Like maybe OCCM needs to just hire one guy with a phone… because everything they’re supposed to do as a government agency has been contracted out.”