Bramlett questions BOC bid process

The Barrow County Board of Commissioners last week delayed approval of a contract with a Monroe-based architect after local architect and school board member Bill Bramlett raised questions about the fairness of the county’s bidding process.

Bramlett is the owner of Bramlett Associates Architecture, which was one of eight firms bidding to provide architectural services for the renovation of the courthouse complex in downtown Winder.

His firm offered to do the work for a flat fee of six percent – or about $193,500 – on the $3.2 million project. That was in third highest in the pack of proposed fees ranging from 4.75-9.5 percent.

The winning bid of 4.75 percent – or about $153,100 – was from Carter Watkins Associates Architects Inc. of Monroe, the county’s longtime architect on a variety of projects.

But Bramlett flatly questioned whether any company could perform full architectural services at a rate of 4.75 percent, which he said is close to half the industry standard.

“How in the world can somebody propose something like that when I know that at six percent I am going to lose money?” Bramlett said.

Bramlett called on the board to add to its procurement process another step in which the top two or three bidders would be interviewed to clear up any such questions or discrepancies.

He also said that if the winning bid of 4.75 percent did include engineering services, it could result in poor-quality architectural plans leading to unexpected construction cost overruns.

And he questioned why Carter Watkins has worked for years under a general county contract that has not been bid out in several years. He said on one project, instead of the contracted fee of 4.75 percent, the company charged 6 percent.

“So we need to make sure, again at the risk of giving Bramlett Associates a black eye and me never working for the county, we need to make sure we give competitors a chance, especially people who have based their entire future on this county and this community,” Bramlett said.

A representative of Carter Watkins was not at the meeting Tuesday night, but county operations development manager Bob Hohe defended both the quality of the company’s work and its ongoing relationship with the county.

Commissioner Ben Hendrix said he would expect anyone bidding on county work to “read the fine print from front to back” in bid documents.
But commissioner Isaiah Berry said the county should talk to local companies before bidding out work to other firms.

“Because we talk to them does not mean we give them that bid, but at least we talk to them so we wouldn’t have a situation like this come up,” Berry said.

Commissioner Billy Parks noted that he is one of three commissioners serving on the Courthouse Renovation Committee that recommended approval of the courthouse contract with Carter Watkins. But he said while he has the “utmost confidence” in Carter Watkins, Bramlett’s questions should be addressed before the new contract is approved.

He made a motion to table approval of the contract “until a later date” and the BOC unanimously approved the motion.