Procurement, RFPs and buying cooperatives

Your rules decide the route

Before design, before a wish list, find out three things: your own purchasing policy thresholds, whether the funding source imposes additional rules, and who has signature authority at each dollar level. Everything else follows.

Thresholds exist to force competition at scale and to keep small purchases from costing more in process than in product. They are also what a challenge will be argued over, so get them from the purchasing officer in writing rather than from institutional memory.

RFP, RFQ, IFB and sole source

Invitation for bid (IFB). You publish a complete specification and a set of drawings. Bidders price it. Award goes to the lowest bidder who is responsive (bid what you asked for) and responsible (capable of doing it). Good when a designer has already fixed the layout and equipment schedule.

Request for proposals (RFP). You publish the site, the budget, the users and the outcomes you want. Vendors propose a design and a price. You score on published criteria. This is the normal route for playgrounds, because the design is the thing you are buying.

Request for qualifications (RFQ). You shortlist on experience and capacity with no price, then negotiate scope and fee with the top ranked firm. Common for design services, and required in some states for professional services. Note that some agencies use RFQ to mean request for quotation, which is the opposite. Define the term in your own document.

Sole source. One supplier can genuinely meet the need, most often when you are matching existing equipment for parts compatibility or extending a structure within its warranted system. It needs a written justification approved before you commit, and "we like their catalog" is not one.

Cooperative purchasing, and what it does not fix

A cooperative purchasing contract is an award that a lead public agency competed openly, written so other public agencies can buy from it. When your policy permits piggybacking, using one satisfies your competitive requirement without running your own solicitation, and it can cut two to four months from the schedule.

Three cautions.

1. It does not select a design. Cooperative pricing is a discount off a published catalog from a specific supplier. If you have not done the design work, you have delegated it to a salesperson whose configuration will fill your budget precisely.
2. Check what the contract covers. Many cover equipment only. Surfacing, site work, excavation and drainage often fall outside and still need their own procurement, which means two contracts and an interface to manage.
3. Federal funds add a test. The Uniform Guidance procurement standards require you to document that the underlying contract was competitively awarded and that the price is reasonable. Keep the lead agency's solicitation, tabulation and award in your file.

Writing a scope of work that gets comparable bids

The scope is where the project is won or lost. Bids you cannot compare are worse than no bids.

Include, at minimum:

• Site. Survey or accurate plan, existing utilities, access route for trucks, staging area, grade change, soils information, and who owns spoil.
• Users. Age ranges served, expected peak occupancy, school or park context, supervision model.
• Required play events. By type and count, not by product. "At least two slides, one of which is accessible from a transfer platform, at least six swing bays including one adaptive seat, two independent spinning events".
• Fall height limit. State a maximum. This one number controls surfacing cost across the entire area.
• Surfacing. Material, required critical fall height rating, test method, depth or thickness, base and drainage responsibility, and the warranty term.
• Accessibility. Reference the 2010 ADA Standards for play areas and state the required counts of ground level and elevated components you expect. See ADA requirements.
• Standards compliance. Cite ASTM F1487 by edition and the CPSC handbook, and require a signed statement of conformance. CPSC, ASTM and standards explains what each document is and is not.
• Deliverables and schedule. Shop drawings, footing details, submittals, installation dates, and the weather assumptions behind them.

Evaluation criteria and weighting

Publish the weighting in the solicitation and score against it. Changing criteria after opening is the most common successful protest.

Score design on what children will be able to do, not on rendering quality. Play value sets out the criteria that survive a scoring panel.

Require price on a common form. If one proposer excludes surfacing and another includes it, the scores are meaningless. A single bid form with the same line items as your budget breakdown solves it.

Warranty, installation, retainage and acceptance

Warranty language should separate structural components, moving parts, plastic and finish, because their terms differ by an order of magnitude. Ask what voids each one. Unsupervised volunteer installation commonly does.

Installation language should require a manufacturer-certified installer, specify footing depth and concrete strength, require as-built documentation, and state who verifies surfacing depth or thickness at completion. For a poured in place system, require in-place impact testing at defined locations before final payment; for loose fill, require documented installed depth after settlement.

Retainage of 5 to 10 percent held until acceptance is standard and is your only real leverage at the end. Define acceptance precisely: punch list complete, as-builts delivered, surfacing test results submitted, manufacturer certification of installation received, and an independent post-install audit passed by an inspector holding current certification. CPSI certification explains what that credential covers.

Keep the whole package. The solicitation, the award, the submittals, the test results and the audit are the file you will need in year six, filed the way maintenance records are kept.

What to do next

Sequence procurement against the rest of the project with the playground project timeline, because equipment lead times and weather windows will drive your award date more than your budget calendar will. Confirm your funding route first in funding a playground, since the money usually dictates the method. Then work through choosing an installer for the questions that separate a responsible bidder from a cheap one.