PUBLIC TRANSIT/Commission uses third party for bus procurement

When the Saint Cloud, Minn., Metropolitan Transit Commission (MTC) needed to replace buses, it hired a third-party transit management firm to handle the procurement. By contracting with the consulting firm, the MTC was able to avoid pressure from the community to buy locally, and it was able to avoid tying up its limited staff.

Like many other transit agencies, the MTC was struggling to maintain transit service using older, rapidly deteriorating coaches beyond their designed lifecycle. Out of its fleet of 32 buses, 28 were more than 10 years old.

When word spread that the MTC was in the market for new buses, the community put pressure on the agency to buy from a local company. “People assumed [the MTC] would buy from the local manufacturer because [it] would be hiring a local work force and paying local taxes,” says David Tripp, executive director for the MTC. “[Yet], according to state law, anything [costing the MTC] more than $40,000 has to be competitively bid. We were keenly aware of the need to ensure the integrity of the procurement process.”

The MTC sought a consultant that could help inspect bus production, develop technical specifications, evaluate requests for proposals, gather bids, provide a recommendation for award, and negotiate the sale. In April 2000, the agency contracted with Cincinnati-based First Transit to manage those tasks.

Staff members from the MTC and the company used the White Book — a set of standard bus procurement guidelines and options developed by the Washington, D.C.-based American Public Transportation Association, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), and transit coach manufacturers and suppliers — to decide on specifications before soliciting bids. Subsequently, the MTC established criteria with which to score proposals.

An evaluation committee, consisting of MTC staff members and a representative of the consultant, assigned percentages to each criterion based on its level of importance. Final selections would be based on:

• Qualifications (30 percent). The MTC considered the manufacturers’ financial strength, human and physical resources, and contractual integrity. It required that the companies’ buses be tested at the Altoona (Pa.) Bus Testing and Research Center. (To receive federal funding, public transit agencies must select vehicles tested at the facility.)

• Price (25 percent).

• Delivery (25 percent). The MTC wanted delivery no more than 18 months after it awarded the contract. (Longer delivery time meant that the MTC would spend more money maintaining its older buses.)

• Components (15 percent). The MTC staff had grown comfortable using certain makes and models of engines, transmissions, passenger seats, tires and braking systems. The agency wanted the new buses to incorporate as many of those components as possible.

• Passenger seat capacity (5 percent). Three companies, including the local manufacturer, responded to the MTC’s request for proposals. As a result of the selection process, the agency hired Hayward, Calif.-based Gillig to supply its new buses.

• Costing $4.65 million, the 18 vehicles — all low-floor buses seating 32 passengers each — were delivered within 12 months of the contract award. FTA funding covered 80 percent of the costs; the Minnesota Department of Transportation paid for six percent of the costs; and the MTC paid for the balance with money from its capital improvement fund.

  The contract included the option to order an additional 12 buses by the end of 2005. The MTC recently ordered five buses that will be delivered in January 2003.