How much safety can the lowest bidder provide?

An old military joke. When you are in a foxhole and the enemy is throwing everything at you it is of little comfort to know that your rifle was manufactured by the lowest bidder…

KB1971 said :

I dotn think she ahs to wory about workers getting paid, most government tenders are over inflated anyway.

Dyslexia rules KO.

unbelievable, imagine going with the cheapest quote. tsk tsk, those gubbimt people

I would presume that unless you wanted to get hauled over the coals by everyone from the Auditor General to the opposition to the chattering classes then ceteris paribus you do accept the lowest quote

Zeital said :

taking the GDE into account who in there right mind would make it 1 lane both ways only to turn around and make it 2 lanes both way just after the 1st part of it was done?

I assume they went with the cheeper option but then it got out of proportion anyways cuz they basicly had to redo it anyways

They went with a design that they could afford in the first instance and one they thought would last a bit longer than it did. This discussion is about going for the cheapest price which is something entirly different.

In the GDE case who knows if the companies that did the work were the cheapest, the most expensive or somewhere in-between. Unless any of us know the answer than not one of us can really comment on the value for money for the road. All we can carry on about is the stupidity of the design and the ultimate cost to us the taxpayer.

Crazy thought, why is everything put out to tender?
Does TAMS even have it’s own road crew to build/maintain roads instead of putting everything out to tender?
Sure, some tasks may require specialist outside contractors, but outsourcing everything comes at a cost, be it financial or not.
The tender process alone can be a waste of time and money for many involved.

Awesome way to artificially inflate pricing.

Amanda Bresnan is right.

Any government of the day should really consider fostering an environment where local companies can grow and prosper in order to ensure Canberra a consistent and reliable supply that can incrementally improve over time.

That means paying enough so that successful contractors can make a decent enough (note, not exorbitant) profit to stay afloat, to pay their staff and sub-contractors and to put some money back into improving their own businesses.

If you just keep focusing on lowest cost then you will inevitably see a pattern where fly-by-night operators come along, undercut the more serious players, quote on work with very little margin, and doing bodgy jobs. These operators will ultimately end up failing and closing their business down because they can’t sustain operations or grow with such tight margins.

In the meantime the serious players start folding also because they’re not winning any jobs due to others undercutting them (or they themselves start cannibalising their own margins)… The end result is an environment with continuous churn of businesses coming and going, bodgy work being delivered, and a reduced level of capability and productivity in the local market.

Sometimes, if you want to do what’s best for Canberra in the long run, you’ve got to think beyond the short term perceived cost savings. Acknowledged, the expenditure on contracts will need to be sustainable – we can’t just ignore costs when awarding tenders – but costs shouldn’t be the most heavily weighted element.

Governments should not be going for the cheapest, but rather the best value for money (just like every other business). This should factor in every single consideration they can possibly, um, consider – quality, time, support for local businesses, professionalism, past experience, etc, etc – including the way the company treats its workers.

However, this weighing up will always be heavily related to the dollar amount, so you would expect the cheapest quotes to most often get the gig. And the way the contractor treats their staff (safety, pay, etc) should be a pretty minor one, since governments already have extensive systems in place to ensure those things, like minimum wage and OHS laws.

If the Greens genuinely think that private companies are not doing right by their employees they should be suggesting that the government do the job themselves rather then contracting out. Which I imagine would suit them fine, in a new age communism kinda way.

I dotn think she ahs to wory about workers getting paid, most government tenders are over inflated anyway.

Who’s to say the price of the tender has anything at all to do with the quality of the work? Rather than putting up with sensationalist claims from psychic politicians with a keen sense of hindsight they need to get a few people with actual knowledge of construction to make these decisions. Most public works are simply a good way to create good employment figures, and the more guys you have standing around doing bupkis or repeat work, then the better the economy must be when judged by employment figures.
Unfortunately they usually forget to mention the number of interstate workers on these projects. It looks good on paper for the people of Canberra but much of the money is heading out of town.