Changing the locks at Parliament House

I fail to see how the current locks could be beautiful things, they’re just locks in a building built in 1988. Obviously with 6,200 locks and a lot of political secrets there would be a lot of doors that need locking and having locks that are broken and that anyone can make a copy of the key wouldn’t be a particularly good for the security of the building. Procurement tendering processes are often stupid things, but then when someone abuses the process you can somewhat see why it’s there.

Tenders sometimes fail because there is insufficient interest from industry (which usually means the tender is extraordinarily badly written, has unclear requirements, or is unrealistic about the level of outcome for the anticipated spend).

If it were up to me (and it’s not) I’d do away with the current formal tender process altogether, as the additional hassle and cost is ADDED TO THE COST OF THE SERVICES BOUGHT BY GOVERNMENT! In my industry segment, it’s not unusual to have to mount a bid to get onto a services panel, and then write another bid for an individual piece of work. And yep, we have to pad out charges to cover these activities. Bottom line, the current version of tendering ends up costing the government more. It would be better to have an arrangement whereby govt execs were held more accountable for their external services spending, and govt formally shared costing information between agencies. Then the service providers could compete on quality, as the approximate deal win prices would be easy to calculate.

locks are mankind’s greatest indictment. ;(

Are there not maintenace people at PH? can’t they just buy a million locks and have them fitted?

How can only one person be asked to tender – that’s not a tender, that’s just hiring someone.

This thread is worthless without pictures!

Many agencies have a zero tolerance policy on any ‘hospitality’. It’s all about fairness and impartiality being seen to be upheld, as well as actually happening.

I don’t know what the ‘hospitality’ was like, but I hear the RFT writer has the most secure house in Canberra!

Can we define hospitality?

A spot of lunch to discuss the RFT surely wouldn’t put the kybosh on the plan. It is a common practice here in Industry land.

I wonder how the cost of preparing and processing four RFTs compares with the cost of the replacement locks?

Anyway, I don’t see anything wrong with accepting a bit of “hospitality” – it happens in the private sector. Also if you’ve ever had the displeasure of writing a RFT you would understand that a bit of “hospitality” might ease the pain & suffering.