More collaborative Roading professional services contract for Council

Starting Saturday 1 November, Opus International Consultants Ltd (Opus) will deliver our Professional Services contract for a three year term, with the option of two further one year extensions of contract.

In the Coromandel, we don't do all this work in-house, but have a team that manages consultants and contractors who do the physical work for us. However, to help us increase our in-house ability to work with our communities, we are also recruiting an additional Roading Engineer to work alongside our Roading Manager Matt Busch and current Roading Engineer Sam Edlin.

The way we crafted our new contract also allowed us to build in a more collaborative way of working with our communities, especially with specialist design of complex work.

This was reflected in the two-phase tendering process we advertised through Local Government Online's Tenderlink and worked with Morrison Low to evaluate. In addition to price, attention was given to health and safety, insurance, relevant experience, track record, management skills, technical skills and methodology.

An extra reason for our change of approach to this contract is the prospect of asset management assistance being available to individual councils on a regional basis, through the Waikato Road Asset Technical Accord (RATA). This gives us an improved and more consistent approach to road asset management across the greater region. Therefore, this also requires our contractor to be flexible in the way it works with us, since the scope of services may change as a result of this greater collaboration across the Waikato.

We congratulate Opus on their successful tender. Tender Evaluation Team member Matt Busch say "The results of the tender gave us confidence that Opus is the best long term partner for our Roading activity, which is one of Council’s essential services, and a significant annual spend."

You can read the full report to Council in the Agenda for the 24 September 2014 Council meeting here.

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Next steps for the Roading team

We are now reviewing the strategy for tendering the group of roading term maintenance contracts which expire on 30 June 2015.

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Tender Evaluation Team (TET)

John Harris (TET Leader) from John Harris Consultancy (Certified Tender Evaluator)
Matt Busch from Thames-Coromandel District Council
Bruce Hinson from Thames-Coromandel District Council
Doug Low from Morrison Low

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