Three Quotes

[themadhippy]

Is "best value" still a thing within local authoritys? was a handy way of getting around the cheapest quote mentality.

Quote

Council employee orders £500,000 of equipment from his brother's company..." 

Essential quality's if said employee  has ambition of becoming an MP

[Irothwell]

You could try Enlightened Lighting based in Bristol.  The small sales team there will help you with all your requirements.  They are really helpful and can supply and install the equipment and they have a large range of hire kit if you wanted to demo the equipment before you buy.

 

[sunray]

In my experience 3 quotes invariably goes wrong especially if there's a consultant involved.

[Junior8]

Public sector procurement is so poor one wonders why it hasn't been investigated over the years. Back in the seventies the council where I was at college would insist on a discount and give the job to any load of rubbish who offered one even if the local reliable bloke without the discount was the same price. The same council had a central procurement section who manged to saddle all their secondary schools (who still then insisted on kids using fountain pens) with zillions of unsized paper exercise books! (It's like blotting paper.)

The three quote system is one of those things which appears to give best value and often does nothing of the sort. To anyone new to it I'd only give this advice. Write the specification as tight and specific as possible and then insist, being as unpleasant/determined as your status allows, that the usual 'suppliers are permitted to suggest alternatives of identical quality' condition is deleted from the invitation to quote. Even with that if it works chances are they'll still throw public money down the drain somehow. The last time I used it my preferred supplier who got the work offered, as a sweetener, a further discount for payment in 30 days. He was paid I think in 90. 

 

[Bryson]

On 4/8/2022 at 4:03 PM, sunray said:

In my experience 3 quotes invariably goes wrong especially if there's a consultant involved.

I'll bite.  (Day job:  Theatre Consultant, although not in the UK.)

 

Why so?

 

 

I do competitive tenders all day every day.  I issued 4 last week and have two more going out the door today...the spring is brutal...   Yes, they do sometimes go wrong.  But not that frequently.

An older Theatre Consultant I know (actually at a different company, not my employer) once told me:  "They'll notice the one thing you get wrong, not the 10,000 things you get right."  Consultants are human, fallible and do make mistakes, but I would contend that the situation without access to them (particularly in orgs that don't yet have any technical staffing) would be much, much worse.

 

 

[dosxuk]

When you get to work with a good, knowledgeable and correct-subject consultant, I've rarely had any actual issues (and the ones who have been problems are probably better described as cowboys rather than consultants - the sort of people who's entire work ethic is cheapest price and lowest cost).

But it's when you get forced to use the IT consultant because you want to buy something with a network port; the facilities consultant because it has a power plug; or worse, the architect who's decided that they know more than all those money wasters and can sort it all out themselves (for a price, naturally) it can all go very wrong very quickly.

[Stuart91]

6 hours ago, Bryson said:

I would contend that the situation without access to them (particularly in orgs that don't yet have any technical staffing) would be much, much worse.

I'm not a consultant, but have worked with some. Unless there's a clear spec for the job, decision-makers are usually left comparing apples and oranges. I've had quotes rejected only to find that the customer chose to go with a far cheaper option from someone else who hasn't understood the requirements and come up with a far inferior solution. 

(In one very satisfying instance the "cheap option" didn't work, so we ended up renting the customer equipment to get them by, and eventually were paid to do a fresh installation.)

When 3 quotes doesn't work, it's often because of this kind of wild mismatch (with nobody knowledgeable enough to choose) or it's a stitch-up. I can usually tell when we've been asked in to provide the second or third quote to show due diligence when the preferred supplier has already been picked.

Similarly, we've occasionally had customers ask us to suggest companies that would provide a quote that would make us look good, so they don't get any arguments from other committee members etc. It's flattering, but a little awkward... 

[sunray]

9 hours ago, Bryson said:

I'll bite.  (Day job:  Theatre Consultant, although not in the UK.)

 

Why so?

 

 

I do competitive tenders all day every day.  I issued 4 last week and have two more going out the door today...the spring is brutal...   Yes, they do sometimes go wrong.  But not that frequently.

An older Theatre Consultant I know (actually at a different company, not my employer) once told me:  "They'll notice the one thing you get wrong, not the 10,000 things you get right."  Consultants are human, fallible and do make mistakes, but I would contend that the situation without access to them (particularly in orgs that don't yet have any technical staffing) would be much, much worse.

 

 

No biting invited.

I worked in the AV industry, mostly corporate conferencing/training facilities and particularly in the big international financial companies littering Canary Wharf. We were on the list of preferred installers for most of them. I'll say that we were called back to 50% of the jobs to make the alterations we suggested at the tender stage to make the system do what the customer wanted and not what the consultant wanted.

We'd decline to tender for one consultants jobs. His rear projection rooms with multiple mirrors never did work, of course it never was his fault and far too expensive on our time, as was his unreasonable meddling.

I will say it was a big shock when we declined to tender for one of his jobs at Morgan Stanley and sent a detailed multi page explanation to them why, six months down the line the customer called us and asked if we could sort it out, the solution being to rebuild the whole system, starting from scratch.

We always printed a copy of the consultants spec and emails to add to the installation site file so their errors were instantly available when the customer asked for something to be done differently.

Of course there are excellent consultants and one in particular we pretty much accepted the spec as being perfect. His jobs always ran very smoothly.

 

The quip I learnt from an elder: Your reputation is only as good as your last job. Which thank heavens I managed to never lose. That's not saying nothing ever went wrong though.

[sandall]

I didn't go to Consultants School, but on the occasions I've worn the teeshirt I've regarded the role as firstly finding out from the client what they actually want to achieve (not what boxes someone's told them they need), which means talking to the people who are going to use it, rather than just the suits, sorting out their budget (which may have no slack if the money is a grant or legacy) & then writing a performance spec. Everything supplied needs to be "professional" quality & preferably industry-standard, but I am happy to let potential suppliers come up their own solutions, using brands they are familiar with, as long as they meet the spec or can come up with a convincing argument for varying it. Provided you can tease out of the client what they really want to do (beware music tech), this approach worked for me.

Edited April 12, 2022 by sandall

[sunray]

2 hours ago, sandall said:

I didn't go to Consultants School, but on the occasions I've worn the teeshirt I've regarded the role as firstly finding out from the client what they actually want to achieve (not what boxes someone's told them they need), which means talking to the people who are going to use it, rather than just the suits, sorting out their budget (which may have no slack if the money is a grant or legacy) & then writing a performance spec. Everything supplied needs to be "professional" quality & preferably industry-standard, but I am happy to let potential suppliers come up their own solutions, using brands they are familiar with, as long as they meet the spec or can come up with a convincing argument for varying it. Provided you can tease out of the client what they really want to do (beware music tech), this approach worked for me.

I've never tried to pretend to be a consultant but my approach is similarly to speak with the end user, if I'm allowed near them!! Grants have always a real pain as someone had to tick boxes to get the grant and that's what they/you/I get lumbered with. One problem I encounter with schools is a member of staff is aware of what another school has and says "I want that one." which is how a school ended up with a 48 channel digital sound desk and not a single member of staff has a scoodydoo how to use it.

As a 'supplier' I hate with a vengence the consultant itemising kit down to the tinyest detail and even worse insists on supplying the kit and I then struggle to workout how to integrate them or even what function some items are supposed to satisfy. (I've had 3 surplus Extron 1 to 4 RGBHV DA's in stock where they had no purpose or even rack space). I also hate when they specify their standard system and expect the installer to adapt it to suit the job, actually those 2 descriptions are remarkably similar.

[Stuart91]

17 hours ago, sunray said:

One problem I encounter with schools is a member of staff is aware of what another school has and says "I want that one." which is how a school ended up with a 48 channel digital sound desk and not a single member of staff has a scoodydoo how to use it.

We had something similar happen some years ago. We were working with a charity who were setting up a community centre with a performance space. They had funding in place for a pretty generous installation that had been quoted and refined, just waiting on someone pushing the button to get going with it. 

Then they hit a last minute snag with the conveyancing of their building. Without that secured, the funders couldn't hand over the money. But the end of the financial year was approaching, and they had to spend it somehow. 

They essentially went knocking doors around the neighbourhood, and the local high school gratefully accepted a donation of ~£40k of kit. We then had to shoehorn the installation, with as few substitutions as possible, into a completely different venue. 

[Robin D]

Best I had was volunteering at a school. They were a fair bit of kit short to make the show go well including a large mixer and some specific lighting. I offered to supply install operate and retrieve my gear afterwards for free. The Admin Manager kept insisting she would have to get two other quotes, and anyway, my company (actually an I T consultancy!) was not on the preferred supplier list! 

Fortunately the head had the nous to overrule her. I still shake my head at the logic!

[Junior8]

On 4/11/2022 at 2:44 PM, Bryson said:

An older Theatre Consultant I know (actually at a different company, not my employer) once told me:  "They'll notice the one thing you get wrong, not the 10,000 things you get right."  Consultants are human, fallible and do make mistakes, but I would contend that the situation without access to them (particularly in orgs that don't yet have any technical staffing) would be much, much worse.

I think that's very fair comment - where it falls down for me is that you can use someone you trust, get out a scheme and a spec and then someone insists on the three quote system thinking they'll get the same thing cheaper. (These people would be appalled of the same system was applied to their salaries.) And things are not always the consultants fault or even down to  the sales rep. Back during Labour's 'building schools for the future' programme I was buying some kit for a tiny village hall - 12 ways of dimming and a few lanterns. I called in one of my usual contacts who told me that they'd stopped quoting for the 'schools for the future' work due to the grossly over-specified stuff being ordered. They felt it was ethically very dubious to spend public money on stuff that would probably never be used. No doubt someone supplied it and we paid.

[Stuart91]

5 minutes ago, Robin D said:

The Admin Manager kept insisting she would have to get two other quotes, and anyway, my company (actually an I T consultancy!) was not on the preferred supplier list! 

School "management" gets worse when the building is being run by a private firm. 

We were setting up for a small outdoor concert in a school playground when the school "facility manager" tried to shut the gig down. His complaint was that power was being supplied from inside an adjacent classroom. (Direct quote: "I don't know how many volts you're pulling from that")

The real beef was that his employers hadn't had the chance to quote for the job, and were missing out on the usual markup / backhander that they usually got from their chosen suppliers. 

The gig went ahead as planned - we simply called his bluff and offered to bring a generator. The teaching staff all seemed quite happy to see him lose the argument, apparently all sorts of supplies were getting pushed through the management company to the detriment of the school finances.