April 2002

Ran:  San Diego Daily Transcript-Real Estate/Construction
April 15, 2002

MACC process puts contractors and military in comfort zone
By THOR KAMBAN BIBERMAN
Four San Diego County-based companies have won the exclusive right to bid on $600 million worth of work constructing and renovating bachelor enlisted quarters, or BEQ's throughout the Southwest.
The four firms, which are limited to doing $150 million apiece, are the Douglas E. Barnhart Co., Harper Construction Co.,  and Solpac Inc., doing business as Soltek Pacific, all from San Diego, and RQ Construction Inc. of Bonsall.
The first contract has already been awarded to RQ Construction, which will be developing a 200-room BEQ for 400 Marines as Camp Pendleton.  Completion of the $15,128,000 project is slated by January 2004.
A contractor who hasn't gotten any of the jobs at the end of the process would be entitled to a minimum payment of $50,000 for having made it that far.  However, if Jim Summers of Soltek Pacific is correct, it has never happened that a company making it to the final cut hasn't gotten at least one of the military jobs from the government.
Summers, a Soltek vice president, and Suresh Rayana, chief estimator for the Douglas E. Barnhart Co., said the next job up for bid is a #38.5 million BEQ for the 32nd Street Naval Station in San Diego.  This 258-room facility, which actually will be constructed across Harbor Drive, is expected to be awarded June 10.
"That building will be almost 200,000 square feet," said Rayana.
More BEQ projects are also planned at Pendleton and Twenty-Nine Palms, as well as other locations that have yet to be revealed.
The Southwest Division of the Naval Facilities Engineering Command reports that about 83 percent of the work will be done in California, and that all of the jobs are expected to have been completed no later than December 2007.
The BEQ projects contract was competitively procured via the Naval Facilities Engineering Command e-solicitation Web site with 11 proposals received last fall.  The selections were made at the end of last month.  The names of the other seven were not revealed.
The contractors were evaluated on the basis of past performance rather than their ability to do it cheaply.  This is similar to the request for qualifications (RFQ) process common in the private sector.
"Over the last 10 years, most government agencies were tired of getting the low bids and having failures on their projects," said David Golden, vice president of preconstruction at Harper Construction.
John Phillips, a capital  improvements manager for the Southwest Division, said it wasn't so much that there were problems with the projects but that the old process was more cumbersome.  The Naval Facilities Engineering Command's answer to this problem was to develop the multiple award construction contract, or MACC.  "Multiple award contracts can move faster and more efficiently," Phillips said.
"What the Navy is saying is that we went through a healthy process, and while you won't be right for one, you will be right for something else," Golden added.
Golden said his firm has been involved in developing three BEQ's at Camp Pendleton involving several hundred units for the Marine Corps both the old and the new way, and likes the MACC approach much better.
This is not the only MACC here, Harper Construction, Sundt Construction of Tucson (which also has a substantial presence here) and Hunt Building Corp. of El Paso are involved in a $250 million MACC for family housing in the southwestern U.S.
Hunt Building has been awarded the first $11.5 million contract in that MACC for projects throughout the western U.S. as well, and is joined by Kvaas Construction of San Diego, Soltek, R.A. Burch Contracting and Sundt.
When one or possibly two contractors have their allotted amount of work, the remainder of the contract would go out for rebid.  That, in turn could be repeated as often as necessary.
"They don't like to compete with less than three proposers," said Soltek's Summers.
He said Soltek has done about $85 million worth of barracks at Pendleton and Twenty-Nine Palms.
While the large MACC's are the best known, Tom Quinn, president of RQ Construction, said the Naval Facilities Engineering Command also has small MACC's that can only be bid on by small businesses. Quinn is only too happy to be part of the big leagues, however.  His firm has also built several barracks at Pendleton and Lemoore, Calif.

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