It’s time to eliminate the lowest-bidder requirement
You get what you pay for: It’s true when it comes to clothes, food, and especially when it comes to multimillion-dollar construction projects.
For too long, the lowest-bidder jobs that have been required by municipalities around the world meant that whoever could do the job for the least amount of money won the contract, which oftentimes leads to rushed deadlines, staffing restraints, and ultimately, shoddy workmanship.
Isn’t there a better way to get infrastructure built quickly, on-time, on-budget, and most importantly, safely? The answer is yes, as long as the lowest-bidder requirements are eliminated.
The lowest-bidder requirements that have dictated the way construction companies do business have been around for decades. At first, it was designed to save the government money while still maintaining a rigorous schedule of creating and maintaining new roads, bridges, and buildings.
Simply put, this practice is antiquated and should be replaced with a system that awards jobs to those organizations that are best suited to do the work. Those organizations that have a track record of safety, excellent job quality, and on-time delivery of projects should be the companies that consistently win bids. By shifting the paradigm from lowest-bidder to highest-quality, we all win. We get to drive on roads and bridges that are built to last and we get to work and go to school in buildings that are safe and compliant.
How are we going to get there? By equipping field teams with the resources they need to get their jobs done quickly, safely, and at the highest quality. Pen and paper don’t cut it anymore. It’s expensive and it’s time-consuming (searching a safety sheet for the one record you need, scanning that document, sending it to the person who needs it, and then managing its whereabouts isn’t scalable).
If you’re a contractor, having a trusted source of information about your organization’s safety, quality, and compliance records means that you can prove to prospective clients that your cost to complete a job is reasonable. Gone is the pressure to come in with the lowest bid since you can justify your price. Clients won’t have to worry about increased insurance premiums or OSHA inspections because as the contractor, your organization can prove, in near-real-time, that your employees have kept meticulous records of compliance. In order to be a serious contender in a best-value project bid, your organization will have to defend the price with metrics that have proven success. Having data that validates safety adherence, inspection compliance, and more means that the cost you’re bidding is justified.
With a mobile data collection and workflow automation platform like Fulcrum, you can create custom apps that enable your teams to conduct safety and quality inspections quickly and efficiently with their Android or iOS devices. As work is completed, you can view inspection records (including multimedia) from across all of your sites via a dashboard to conduct QA remotely and keep your projects moving swiftly.
If you’re interested in learning more about how Fulcrum can help transform the safety and quality compliance at your organization, request a demo and we’ll show you how it works.
