Sandy Springs Awards New Contracts; Leaves Out CH2M Hill

The City of Sandy Springs officially has its new General Government Services awards in place, halting the five-year relationship with CH2M Hill.

During Tuesday’s City Council meeting the City awarded contracts for Municipal Court Services, and Recreation and Parks to Jacobs Engineering Group; Communications and Community Development to the Collaborative; and Public Works to URS Corporation. 

The firms take over on July 1.

Several CH2M Hill employees attended the City Council meeting. During public comments, CH2M Hill Vice President Paul Demit addressed City Council.

“Given the exemplary record of our staff and the highly successful partnership between the City of Sandy Springs and CH2M Hill, we are deeply disappointed in the Council’s actions tonight to end our partnership,” he said. “We are also saddened to see that the Source Selection Committee only rated this Sandy Springs team as satisfactory in a performance confidence evaluation.”

Council members made comments praising CH2M Hill staff, adding that the decision to move away from the firm came down to money.

Council member Tibby DeJulio said that the ratings of CH2M Hill in the selection process were reflective of the proposal and not the people.

“This was purely a financial decision,” he said. “It looks like...the residents of Sandy Springs are going to save about $7 million per year. That’s $35 million over a five-year program year.”

Demit told Patch that the process provided an opportunity for CH2M Hill to revise its proposal, but the firm was comfortable with its bidding price, given the success it has had in working with the city.

During a presentation, City Manager John McDonough described the bidding process for each service contract and how it was evaluated by a Source Selection Committee.

Three independent panels were formed within the committee to respectively review offerors' proposals, rate performance confidence, and review cost/price.

CH2M Hill bid highest on three of the five service contracts. And second highest on the remaining two.

“The difference was the price,” said Mayor Eva Galambos. “And that’s the private market.”

The City selected the lowest bid in all fiscal year 2012 award contracts as follows:

• Communications              $594,413

• Municipal Court                $794,239

• Public Works                  $3,086,205

• Recreation and Parks    $2,226,774

Contracts were already secured for Financial Services with Severn Trent Services for $1,593,201, and Information Services with InterDev for $1,040,853; bringing the total FY2012 award values to $10,126,293.

Financial Services and Information Services are considered separate “work packages” from General Government Services. As such, firms were not allowed to bid on work in both categories.

A press release from the City said, “Conflicts of interest may arise should one firm hold contracts to provide all services.”

CH2M Hill handled all of the work since 2005. Under the new structure, the firm decided to bid on the larger contract of General Government Services, rather than Financial Services and Information Services.  

In his address to City Council, Demit recalled how in Sept. 2005 CH2M Hill got newly formed Sandy Springs up and running within three months, and has since garnered national and international recognition and awards for creating a successful public/private partnership.