Communicating to potential sellers what the county wants to buy requires carefully written specifications.
Auditor Paula Tullos recalled the time Navarro County went out to buy a dump truck and asked for the wrong axle-to-weight ratio.
"We got bids for three different trucks and none of them were what the commissioner had wanted," she said. "Then, when we looked carefully at our specs, we realized we had asked to buy a truck that wouldn't actually roll."
For many items, Tullos and other county purchasers frequently take the route of finding out who else has bought the same goods and asking for their bid specifications as a good first draft.
"Especially the larger counties are likely to have purchased what we're looking for," Tullos said. "They're always willing to send us their generic specs to use as a foundation."
Denton County Purchasing Agent Beth Fleming said that writing bid specifications "is really something of an art."
"It's our job to make clear what we need and to write it down in a way that's fair to all potential bidders," she said. "If there's a major problem with a bid circumstances where we open them and then have to ask the commissioners court to reject them and re-bid then everyone knows everyone else's submitted prices. It makes everyone very uncomfortable."
In those circumstances, an unsuccessful bidder may elect to sue the county, but that's not a certainty, according to Assistant Attorney General Pam Perkins. "The fact that the vendor may want to do business with the county again in the future is a disincentive to suing," she said.
Perkins called the bid specifications "the roadmap of the entire purchase process. It's the offer, the acceptance and the key to the whole contract if there's a dispute later on. The more detailed the information in the bid, the better departments can get served."
In Denton, Fleming said she sometimes invites randomly drawn potential bidders in for a pre-bid conference.
"We'll propose some specifications and ask for comments," she said. "With competitors in the room, they have to look each other in the eyes and defend what they're saying. It's been a great tool."
She cited a situation when the county needed the services of a moving company but had not hired one before.
"We didn't know how to word the specs on timing of the moving process or who would supply boxes and when it was to be completed," she said. "The professionals in the field educated us."
There are times, of course, when accepting the lowest bid may not be in the best interest of the county. State law authorizes awarding contracts to "the responsible bidder who submits the lowest and best bid."
In those circumstances, attorney Perkins urged counties to document why a low bidder was not selected. The law requires that unselected low bidders be offered the opportunity to appear before commissioners court to make their case.
Fleming recalled an experience with a uniform rental company that won the low bid one year but was not selected for the bid the following year even though its bid was lowest.
"We presented to the commissioners court that week's
clothing delivery, so that they could see the holes in the clothes themselves,"
she said. "There wasn't much question after that."