I don't have a globe and mail subscription but someone else might. What happened to the guy building Hourstons down in WA?
Nov 1, 2010 — Shipbuilder Bill
Hourston knows more than most about handling murky waters, but it was his ability to navigate an 86-page bid document that ...
Bidding process has grown more transparent but more complicated, too. One misstep and your effort might be for naught
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put cache: in front of the url and it bypasses that sometimes
Shipbuilder Bill Hourston knows more than most about handling murky waters, but it was his ability to navigate an 86-page bid document that clinched the contract for his company to build four hydrographic survey boats for the federal government.
"I do that side of things myself because it's actually become very complex," Mr. Hourston, chief executive officer of Hourston Glascraft Ltd., said from his shipyard in North Vancouver. His firm has delivered three vessels for Fisheries and Oceans Canada and is completing work on the fourth to fulfill the $650,000 contract awarded earlier this year.
"It used to be one or two pages. It was very simple," he said. "They used to have a very broad scope of what the boat would be like, and they sent it out to parties they thought could competitively bid on it."
Now, thousands of Canadian public tenders for goods and services – for amounts ranging from a few hundred dollars to multiple millions – are listed on what's known as the MERX website (
www.merx.com). The site is updated daily with bid opportunities from the federal and provincial governments, as well as from the municipal, academic, school board and hospital sectors. Just last week, the federal government put out a tender for retirement-planning courses for Passport Canada employees, the government of Newfoundland and Labrador invited bids for Christmas lights, the University of Winnipeg requested proposals for fixed seating in two classrooms, and an Ottawa hospital posted a contract for a "secure Web gateway," along with dozens of other listings.
The government buys "a lot of stuff," Mr. Hourston said. "Any supplier who has a product that they think the government can use needs to be searching that MERX data on a weekly basis."
Even so, it is not always easy to spot the opportunities, Darcy Walsh, vice-president and director of procurement services at the communications and consulting firm Hill & Knowlton, said from his Ottawa office. "MERX itself is a complicated website that you really have to know how to navigate. For instance, you might be selling helicopters, but the government might list it on MERX under 'rotors.'"
That said, the procurement of goods and services has become far more transparent at all levels of government in the past decade, opening up a wealth of opportunities for small to mid-sized enterprises, Mr. Walsh noted.
"Procurement is not the way it used to be. It used to be who you know; today it's what you know," Mr. Walsh said, adding that a large part of his practice involves helping clients prepare their bids for scrutiny by government bureaucrats. Although the paperwork can appear daunting, "the RFP [request for proposals process]can set the winners apart from the losers right off the bat if you don't cross all your t's and dot all your i's," Mr. Walsh said.
"The most important thing, other than getting it in on time, is making sure they have answered every single question," added Keith Parker, who landed government contracts in his previous role as a manager with IBM Canada before opening his own procurement consultancy, called the Proposal Centre, in Ottawa.
"I have seen people just miss one mandatory requirement – it can be as simple as [not]including a person's university degree … and that can be a very easy way for a procurement officer to turn away a bid," Mr. Parker said.
However, the bid forms can be finessed beyond the contract specifications, he said. "In the more complex bids, involving service areas, or perhaps a new type of software or outsourcing arrangement or shipbuilding, there comes into play a lot more subjectivity or sentiment. The art is going beyond answering the questions and really speaking to the client as to why the client wants to work with you," he said.
If the bidding company senses that the procuring government is clearly adamant about the work being completed on time, it can include detailed references to how it finished other projects on budget and on time. In the sections asking about the bidder's approach to quality assurance and risk management, there is an opportunity to play up the company's experience and expertise, said Mr. Parker, whose clients range from large multinationals to small firms specializing in catering, graphic design, photography, information technology and translation services.
When Mr. Hourston saw the bid opportunity for the survey boats on the MERX website – just 10 days before the tender closing – he had to scramble to pull all the documentation together. Although he has previously supplied police boats to the RCMP and search-and-rescue vessels to the Coast Guard, government specs have become more exacting. He consulted a naval architect to add polish to his proposal for the boats, which will be equipped with equipment to create navigational charts.
The recession hit the boat industry hard, drying up demand for recreational models, so the order was a welcome development. The contract includes the option of an order for two more boats – which, he said happily, would require only a two-page form.
Special to The Globe and Mail
