Brad Weber wrote on Fri, 07 January 2011 23:12 |
Although it is unfortunate, I have to agree with Ivan. In a competitive bid situation it is too often not what is a logical or best interpretation but rather what interpretation can someone argue might be made. You can probably also bet that the person who bid the ULX solution was not going to ask for clarification if they thought their interpretation gave them some advantage.
On another forum today someone noted that they were putting together a bid for a church where the spec was to provide a "white Line Array". Apparently nothing more than that describing the speaker system. My audio and AV bid sets are routinely 20 to 25 drawings and 30 to 60 pages of specs, no wonder I get underbid on some projects.
|
Is it unfortunate that you agree with me or unfortunate because what I said was true?
And if the job will be given to the lowest bidder-without a review of whether or not their bid is correct for the job-or will even work-then the customer gets what they deserve.
If somebody is going to put out a "spec", then that spec needs to be complete and specifically spell out what the job is, what the results are to be and how it is to be accomplished.
And even then there is no guarantee.
A good number of years ago I was asked to bid for the lighting of the national Christmas tree in DC. This was the first time the job had gone out to bid.
This also entailed having the system up for about a month to be operated from 10am to 1am everyday-including Christmas and New years days.
Some of the specs were it needed to produce 120dB at 200' from the stage-freq response of 30Hz-18Khz, 8 monitor mixes, 32 ch FOH and so forth. They have live performance every night and music played all during the day and a whole host of other little pieces.
They also stated that the system had to be setup 1 week in advance and that it would be measured EVERYDAY untill the opening ceromony.
So I figured the manpower issues-some replacement costs due to the drivers in the cold weather that long and so forth. I gave them a bid that I thought was fair and that should be able to get the job.
Well I didn't. And the winning bid was around 1/4 my bid
HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE? I remember watching the ceromony on TV and when the president walked up to the mic and started talking he said "Can you hear me out there"? I am guessing it was not 120dB
So later that week I went down to "check out the system" that won.
What I saw appaulded me. It was a single Bose 802 on each side of the stage-NO FOH position-no subs-a couple of floor wedges.
The guy mixing was in a little room to the side of the stage-no monitor console-NOTHING at all like what the bid request was for.
I won't mention who won-but it was the same company who had been providing sound for the event for years-and is a large player in the sound reinforcement world.
So I figured that when they were told to write the specs for what they had been providing-and the job was going to be sent out for bid-they just made up all kinds of stuff to make sure that the other bidders would be way higher-and their regular price would look like a bargan.
So even with detailed specs- you can't be sure what you are bidding against if nobody in the know is going to actually check it out.