Are you bidding me?
If you've ever seen the movie Bad Education, you know that shady stuff can happen in school districts. Some of it happens in procurement and bidding, which is where district officials oversee contracts with outside vendors for all kinds of services, including--and perhaps biggest of all--facilities and construction work. It's really important to understand this process for two reasons.
First, it's important when holding districts accountable for their spending. As happened in the movie (and happens all time throughout the country) procurement administrators watch as millions of dollars flow back and forth. They get tempted to skim, scoop, and embezzle.
Second, there are strict laws around procurement particularly when it comes to school facilities and construction. If we want a Green New Deal for Schools that calls for big zero-emission construction projects in school facilities, we have to know what kind of policies are in place around school construction. Procurement and bidding is a complex mess that can differ from state to state and even district to district. As usual, I'm looking at Philadelphia where I live to try and understand it using an ecosocialist lens.
Are you bidding me?
There are two relevant offices in the School District of Philadelphia when it comes to procurement and facilities bidding, one which I know a little about (Office of Capital Programs) and the other about which I'm just learning (Office of Procurement).
I imagine that because facilities projects are so big and capital intensive--they require a lot of money--the OCP handles construction bidding rather than going through the OP. You can see that the OP has a Request for Proposals and Bid Opportunities page, but the OCP has a separate page for construction bids. In these pages, the district puts out calls for bids from contractors to do the work that needs doing.
A couple things to note about these contractors. They need to be approved. The approval process entails getting a Philadelphia Contractors License issued by the city's Department of Licenses and Inspections (lovingly referred to here as L & I). Not only do contractors need to be approved and licensed, they have to compete. When the district is deciding which contractors to choose from, according to state law, districts have to pick the lowest and responsive bidder. Language about this in Pennsylvania municipal law is pretty florid:
Bidding requirements “are for the purpose of inviting competition, to guard against favoritism, improvidence, extravagance, fraud and corruption in the awarding of municipal contracts, and to secure the best work or supplies at the lowest price practicable, and are enacted for the benefit of property holders and taxpayers, and not for the benefit or enrichment of bidders, and should be so construed and administered as to accomplish such purpose fairly and reasonably with sole reference to the public interest.
District's can't pick the people they like the most lest they commit the sins of favoritism, improvidence, etc. There are actually laws specific to school districts in PA as well, as the Pennsylvania Association of School Business Officials (PASBO) lays out in a helpful powerpoint. You can also find a ton of information about this in the commonwealth's Department of Education's uniform guidance document on procurement. So fun.
These bidding regulations are good and bad. It's good in the sense that you could have district administrators giving huge contracts to their friends no matter the price. But it's also a bad thing. What if you want a green contractor who has to charge more because of the materials and protocols they use? It's not at all clear that green contractors could outbid traditional contractors when competing for a project.
I found out that there are clear ways around this though. First, if you make sure to pitch your bid/project as a zero emissions project (for example) then one can choose the lowest bid that meets that criteria. So if your school district decides to make all their projects zero emissions then all the bids they get will be from contractors that can do that kind of thing.
Second, Pennsylvania has a law called the Guaranteed Energy Saving Act which the Department of Education specifically lays out for schools doing green construction work.
The Guaranteed Energy Savings Act allows governmental units to ignore other contrary or inconsistent laws when entering into contracts with qualified providers. School districts have the option of soliciting construction offers through the “Request for Proposals” process outlined in the Act, or by going through the normal statutory process for school construction projects including competitive bidding, separation of contracts and awarding of contracts to the lowest bidder.
I didn't know about this and it's really good to know about!
Why's it on your letterhead?
The OCP's page for construction bids could serve as a real time indicator of what construction projects the district is taking on in the next two or three years. Someone watching that page would know, for instance, that Anne Lane Lingelbach School in the far northwest of the city is getting a new pavement and playground project worth $1.65 million. If you wanted to see if schools with certain demographics were getting certain projects completed you could go into the backlog and check.
You'd also know that Potter Thomas School in North Philly is getting a major HVAC renovation, a contract worth $316,119. Since I'm interested in ventilation I snooped around this bid and found some interesting stuff. Vendors that signed in for a walk-through of the school can be seen here in an image of signatures and emails appended to the bid line. Looking at that sign-in sheet, I see a few things.
One thing that stands out: it's on a piece of paper with Gannett Fleming letterhead. GF is a contractor that the district hired for several contracts worth about $700,000 in the most recent finance documents (which isn't that much compared to some others). The first name on this sign-in sheet is Brian Weisser, an architect at GF who can be seen on a few recent bid addenda. The next name is from O Z Collaborative, an architecture firm with an office on Baltimore Ave in West Philly. After them come a couple SDP officials whose name I recognize from profiling facilities, maintenance, and capital programs as well as an electrician and some names/emails that I can't really read.
But why is the sign-in sheet on GF letterhead? It could be that Weisser just happened to have a piece of paper with him and someone from SDP was like "hey, can we make a sign-in sheet just to get everyone's details for the reporting?" But I think it's interesting that an SDP walk-through sign up sheet for an HVAC system bid is on the letterhead of one of the bidders rather than the district.
That bid line also has another interesting Addendum document with all kinds of details about the contract, including edits to the original document that outline all that's required in renovating this HVAC system. It reveals the details involved in HVAC repair, something I woefully don't know a ton about, but would like to learn more. Like, what's a medium voltage fusible interrupter switch? The Addendum also includes project plans with a map of the school HVAC. Gives you a sense of how complex this all is. Is this plan green? How could it be greener? Could we come up with a way of evaluating of green this plan is?
Zook suit riot
While Procurement is its own standalone office, I wonder to what extent it is subordinate to--or takes orders from--the OCP, particularly when it comes to construction and facilities. There's always a technical arrangement in the apparatus that makes everything look smooth and rational while there's an underlying dynamic of hierarchy and personalities that everyone knows about but doesn't say out loud at meetings or in org charts. I have the feeling that OCP leader Ahmed Sultan might take precedence over OP leader Stephen Zook, and even Office of Operations leader Reggie O'Neil--though I can't say for sure.
Zook has an interesting story. He started out in local journalism, running the student newspaper at Temple and interning at several newspapers in the region. He got a job editing RFPs for the district and went from writing to procurement. After spending some years outside the district he got back in with an exclusive focus on contracts. After seven years became executive director, managing $100m of procurement each year. Just given that history it seems like Sultan might call the shots when it comes to construction and facilities stuff, even if it might fall under Zook's purview.
But Zook is good to know about. He seems to have some good commitments and might be a friendly voice when advocating for more green infrastructure projects. He appeared on a Philadelphia Energy Authority panel alongside Katie Bartolotta from Green Building United. Testifying to City Council on diversity in contracts, Zook reported that 35% of all district contracts when to women/minority-owned businesses. It would be interested to ask for a hearing on green contracts as well. What would it look like for a socialist city councilmember interested in a Green New Deal and school modernization to ask Zook, Sultan, and others at SDP about how to prioritize green bidding and green procurement?
Who else is in this office? While Jennifer Barnes is Buyer 1, Kelly Earl (a PSU-Abington grad) is Buyer 2. I'm not sure how those responsibilities break down. Richard Brown is the small business coordinator in the office, overseeing the diversity initiative but also overseeing compliance and watching contract completion. He seems like someone you'd want to organize to move Zook in the right direction.
Some green lessons from procurement
Overall, this little foray into school district procurement revealed three questions for ecosocialists thinking about green school infrastructure:
What regulations are there are bidding in your state and municipalities? Will green contractors lose out given the different expenses they require? Also, are your green contractors licensed and certified to do school district work?
Are we working with engineers and architects to ensure that bid plans are green as can be? Do we have knowledge resources to determine how a proposed HVAC repair could be greener?
Could we organize local government panels so district experts can testify to their green procurement commitments? Are the people in charge of contracting for facilities and construction services committed to reducing the emissions of our school buildings?