2017 Public Bid Results

[Scooter]

I got the following comments from someone via email, with permission to repost. I'll respond to a couple of the points in a subsequent post. I encourage further feedback from readers here who actually have accounts on the board and are able to post direct responses:

Firstly Scooter – I really appreciate the time and energy you put into our industry. Your report again shows your passion and commitment to serving the workers. In my estimation there is no higher calling.

Comments:

Re. How the Low Bid system works (or doesn’t);

The government’s hands are largely tied as they are required by legislation to accept the lowest bid. Their initiative to introduce a contractor rating system while admirable in intent will serve little real purpose and make very little difference to bid outcomes while increasing the paper bureaucracy enough to be annoying and time wasting for BCTS foresters and contractors alike. This system is in its infancy and is currently being renovated. By my count only 10 out of 49 advertised contracts for 2017 had the rating system attached to them – a whopping 20%. The highest contractor rating I’ve seen is 4.6%, while amongst those with ratings, the lowest is 2.5%. This 2% “advantage” will almost never make any difference

I’d be very surprised if there is very much subterfuge employed by contractors to confuse each other as to what their bidding trends are. >From what I’ve seen, and I’ve watched bid results very closely for a number of years, there is apparently little rhyme and sometimes less reason in bid patterns geographically or by season. For the most part there are too many unpredictable players to take the risk of tailoring your bid to take into account what other contractors are bidding. There is the odd situation where when nearing the end of a bidding season, one can ascertain which contractors appear to be filled up and thus be able to bid higher and expect to win a contract. These opportunities are few and far between. As you say, the public sector is only a small part, perhaps only 25% of the overall number of trees planted in B.C. annually.

Re. Things to remember;

Your report does not consider the government planting contracts that are currently being renewed and are in their 2nd or 3rd year. I know of at least 7 such contracts and I believe there are more. This type of renewable contract is mostly a great benefit to all concerned. The contractor gets stability and the chance to negotiate solid prices going forward. The planters have a better chance of having their wages increase year over year. the government gets consistency and a contractor that knows their way around. Neither the government or the planting contractor is obliged to renew these contracts so one would logically assume that both parties should be happy with pricing and quality of work.

On the negative side of this ledger is the possibility that contractors will bid lower in order to obtain the renewable multi year contract. There’s also the possibility that by annually removing this renewable volume from the open market you create less supply and therefore more demand creating downward pressure on prices. I don’t think this is the case. The reverse of this is that the contractors who have the renewable work already in the bag can sit back and bid higher with less fear of not reaching their volume driven goals.

While it would be lovely if it wasn’t almost always the low bidder who wins the work, it very rarely occurs that anyone else does. So far for 2017 only one contract has gone past the lowest bidder and that one only went as far as number two. The government seems to be doing everything they can to assure that the low bid always wins. With bid deposits they are making it very difficult and expensive to let a contract go. Sometimes when a contractor sees that they have left a pile of money “on the table” to the next bidder, they may realize they’ve made a mistake and wish they could let the contract go. If you have a $25,000 bid deposit at risk, you’re less likely to do that. It’s my experience that individual government foresters are pretty good about allowing a mistake to get “dropped’ and passed on to the next bidder.

There is a disturbing trend developing, primarily with MOFL contracts. MOFL foresters are refusing to release tender results. This means the low bid contractor has no idea how low they are relative to the other bids. If they’ve made a bad mistake they won’t know about it. In the heat of the bidding season when numerous contract tenders are opening every week, contractors are being kept in the dark as to who is getting awarded which contract, or even whether or not they have a bid in place that might end up being successful. MOFL will not divulge their reasoning for keeping these tender results secret but rumour has it that they are afraid of collusion or bid rigging. In other words, contractor A who is the low bid, knows contractor B who has the second place bid and so drops the work after taking a cut of the difference from contractor B. Does this sound paranoid and unrealistic? It is. There is no collusion or bid rigging in this province. Contractors are barely on speaking terms as it is let alone willing to risk getting banned for life by making an offer of collusion to a competitor who’d be happy to see them get black listed by the government.

There is no clear evidence that low bids in the public sector lead to lower bids in the private sector. In fact the reverse is just as likely to be true. Large licensee logging companies that have various degrees of monopoly over logging and therefore planting in big areas of the province, can dictate pricing to those contractors that are attached to working in those particular areas. If you are local and say for instance wanted to work out of Grand Forks, you’d be at the mercy of Interfor who are fairly notorious for demanding low prices. If you become inured to getting low prices in that private sector work then you might very well take those low prices to the public sector if your volume of work with Interfor declined. So the ripple effect Scooter referred to can work both ways.

Conclusions;

Every planting contract is different and although there can be a lot of similarity there can also be large differences. Looking at and comparing prices across the province won’t tell you much about which are low and which are strong bids. If you compare prices in regions you’ll get something more representative. As Scooter said you can’t equate the coast with the interior. Coastal contracts can’t even be compared to each other without knowing the logistical details. Just throw in barges, boats and helicopters and while you might only be paying planters 30% of the bid price of $1.00 per tree that’s still far better than paying 50% of 25 cents on some nasty walk in to an old fill plant near Burns Lake. Conversely a 50 cent bid with big stock and long drives doesn’t mean it’s better than a 30 cent bid with creamy prep 10 minutes from camp.

I like all of the data laid out in the charts attached to the report. I’m not sure that you can draw to many clear conclusions from it. I’m interested in how much money got left on the table from the low bid to the next bid. That can tend to show whether or not the bid is a good one. However that’s not always the case. Some contractors have local infrastructure advantages or better contacts with service providers that give them a significant competitive advantage. Their bids may appear much lower while in fact they are just better researched and supported.

To quote Scooter “To win a contract, you must bid too low. Supply and demand dictates this. “ I don’t agree with this at all. This suggests that every planting contract that’s bid in B.C. is bid too low. That is simply not the case. I agree that wages are too low on average across the province. Generalizations just don’t work here though. There are some companies, often the smaller ones, that are very efficient and work in small local markets where planters are making great money. There are some medium sized operations that have certain crews that do very well. There are even some big outfits that have some gravy jobs. I think it’s unnecessarily demoralizing and negative to generalize and say you have to bid too low to win a contract.

There aren’t too many contractors in B.C. If there were less perhaps they’d all be like some of the big bad companies that we call rookie mills. The real problem is that there is too much pressure inherent in our capitalist system, to keep prices low so as to support big government and increase corporate profits. There aren’t too many contractors, just too many willing to pay inadequate wages.

[Scooter]

The person who sent the above post also sent me some spreadsheets that he/she had been working on, with permission to repost. It's interesting that in the past few days, I've been contacted so far by several people who have talked about additional analysis that they've done, so there may be a few more people sharing additional research/analysis here in the coming months. Anyway, the spreadsheets that I got from this particular person focused on money left on the table.

For those of you who don't understand what that refers to, it's the dollar spread between the low bid and the second lowest bid. Here's a hypothetical example:

01. $125,000 - Company AAA
02. $145,000 - Company BBB
03. $148,000 - Company CCC
04. $152,000 - Company DDD
05. $153,000 - Company EEE
06. $197,000 - Company FFF

In the above example, Company AAA has the lowest bid, and will be offered the contract. The difference in the bids between Company AAA and company BBB is $20,000. That's the amount "left on the table." Company AAA, if they'd been luckier, COULD have bid as high as $144,999 and STILL would have been the lowest bid, and still would have gotten the job. And they would have been paid $19,999 more than they'll actually received, if they had submitted that higher bid. That phrase comes from analogy of leaving a pile of cash ($20,000) on the table at the BCTS office, and walking away from it, leaving it for the Tendering organization to keep.

Anyway, here's a list of charts relating to money left on the table this viewing season. I've tidied them up and played with them a bit for the sake of presentation. I've attached the six PDF's to this message (the board won't allow for attachments of excel files due to the risk of vulnerabilities in macros, etc.). The PDF's would be easy to print, if you're so inclined.

[Scooter]

This [Contractor Rating] system is in its infancy and is currently being renovated.

Yes, the system will actually be quite different next fall. As I understand, it's under discussion/review during the next few months from a number of industry stakeholders.

Your report does not consider the government planting contracts that are currently being renewed and are in their 2nd or 3rd year.

No, you're correct. I made a note of this in one of the recent revisions to the report. You may have seen the initial report which neglected to bring up this point.

So far for 2017 only one contract has gone past the lowest bidder and that one only went as far as number two.

I'm aware of two, but you're correct, there aren't a lot.

Sometimes when a contractor sees that they have left a pile of money “on the table” to the next bidder, they may realize they’ve made a mistake and wish they could let the contract go.

I'm hearing that a lot of times, the government is not releasing the dollar amounts of all bids, they're just saying, "You're the low bidder, please let us know within 48 hours if you intend to take this contract." And then they're not posting the unverified bid results on BC Bid until the contractor has said yes or no. Now that is a verbal commitment, not the signing of the contract. So if the government puts the unverified bid results on BC Bid after the contractor has verbally confirmed that they're taking the job, and then sees that they left a huge amount on the table, I think the contractor could then have second thoughts and back out. But at that point, they'd be past the 48 hours and therefore they'd forfeit the appropriate bid deposit amount. This practice seems to vary from office to office, and is not treated consistently.

What I do see in a couple areas is where a government office will not post the bid results until they have a SIGNED contract, because they want to lock in that contractor. The loss of a performance deposit is a lot more of a problem than the risk of a bid deposit. However, this creates an unfair problem for all of the low bidder's competitors, by not knowing where they're standing in their own recent bids, because the bid has been shrouded in secrecy. I don't know if I have a full understanding of the dynamics here, but I think that there should be a rule that says that unverified bid results must be released by BCTS/MOFLNRO for all companies who submitted bids, within 48 hours. After all, we're talking about the government - taxpayer money. They should be more transparent.

In fact, I'd go even further and suggest that all unverified bid results should be released immediately, not even being allowed to wait 48 hours. After all, the government does have a rule here that has some teeth. If they're worried that a contractor will back out when they see that a lot of money has been left on the table, then that contractor is completely shut out of bidding for the rest of the season. That's a good rule, but it's a serious penalty. If you were bidding, then you probably need work. So a contractor would have to weigh the fact that they can't bid anymore against swallowing that low bid. I think the only weakness is that this rule, as currently implemented, doesn't have much impact on bids at the end of the season. For example, the Blue Collar bid in January ... being told that they can't bid on any more contracts for this year's viewing season is pretty much irrelevant since there are almost no more contracts coming out this year.

There would be one very simple way to fix that problem though. I'd recommend changing the wording slightly to say that if you drop a bid, you can't bid on any more contracts for 365 calendar days from the date of opening of the tender in question. That way, the penalty on a late-season dropped bid is just as significant as a penalty on an early-season dropped bid, because it affects the ability to bid for part of the following fall.

There is no clear evidence that low bids in the public sector lead to lower bids in the private sector.

I would argue that. I know of several cases where that has happened, and is happening, because of foresters who bring up the public bid data and put pressure on direct awards. And I'm not just talking about this happening to one contractor. Obviously, I can't give specific examples, as much as I'd like to publicly denounce those rat bastards.

Foresters need to remember that every contract is different. To go off-track for a moment, I need to complain about something, since a lot of foresters read this thread. Someone (a planter, not a forester) pointed out to me last season that the planters were getting the same prices on a specific contract that I was working in Alberta, compared to what they had been getting on a contract with similar easy ground a few weeks earlier in BC, so the planters should actually be making MORE money than they had in BC, because it was later in the season and they were in better physical condition. Plus, "Alberta doesn't have many rocks." I pointed out that our BC contract had an average block size of 69,000 trees and we could drive the trucks to all the blocks, whereas the Alberta contract had an average block size of 7,000 trees (yes, one tenth) and many of the blocks were walk-ins, and that was having a serious negative impact on production. The point of this story is that there are a lot of reasons why foresters can't look at the public low bid for a job in a different area and assume that they should be able to get their own work done for the same price.

In fact the reverse is just as likely to be true ... So the ripple effect Scooter referred to can work both ways.

That's a possibility.

Some contractors have local infrastructure advantages or better contacts with service providers that give them a significant competitive advantage. Their bids may appear much lower while in fact they are just better researched and supported.

This can't be emphasized enough.

[Tnalp]

Related to bidding and forestry work: There was a AB Beetle Survey Control tender that came out in Nov where the price represented 40% and 60% was past performance, operation plan etc.. A notorious low bidder was offered the job despite grave concerns from the local issuing office. Edmonton higher ups were apparently fixated on the low number (over 50% lower than number 2!!) Anyway what most contractors could see happening happened. Contract pulled and Deposit withheld!! Probably 100K deposit! This AB Beetle work was notorious for contractor bidding shenanigans! Gov clamped down on bidding processes and does not release results anymore. To think that BC is white as snow when it comes to historical bidding "improprieties" doesn't consider human nature as a greed factor. It happens everywhere in one way or another!! The contractor in question will probably end up shafting a bunch of his workers as his business is structured partly on that premise.
Any more info will be gladly shared if interest is there.

[Scooter]

I had some more analysis emailed to me by another regular user of these forums. I'll split this up into two posts, one for coastal, and one for Interior. This one will be the coastal version.

This post will include the two pages of the PDF (from spreadsheet) turned into JPG's, so you can see them on the screen. If you want to download a PDF copy, it's attached to the post.

This analysis goes back to work done in 2011 (the 2010 fall/winter viewing season), and compares low bids on a year to year basis.

The person who sent me this info said the following:

I mostly borrowed the same format you put in your own report to show lowest bids sorted by tree amount and dollar amount for each year from 2011 (and by 2011, I mean the planting season of 2011, so bid results from the fall of 2010). I decided to separate interior and coastal contracts to get a better picture, so mostly this analysis is for interior contracts.

I included a pdf with lowest bids summary for the coast, but it is just for reference as it is very difficult to analyse those given that there are fewer contracts and they are likely very different one from the other.

All the results come from the unverified bid results posted on the forum since the fall 2010, so it doesn't necessarily mean that the company that had the lowest bid ended up accepting the contract (and in at least one extreme case from 2011, the lowest bidder was disqualified: a company called Tiger, sharing the same address and phone number than the infamous Khaira...), but it is the data that is available and it seems a pretty good way to study how companies bid on public contracts.

One thing I noted while putting all of this together is that there seems to be way more trees available this year (about 14 million trees and $5 million more than last year so far), and it looks like 4 companies really took advantage of it (Celtic, Coast Range, Brinkman, and Seneca), but maybe it isn't so and there are other reasons behind those 4 companies bidding aggressively and getting a large chunk of the available work. Coast Range, for example, has a history of being very aggressive on public bids (they got at least 4 contracts per year since 2013), and Celtic started being more aggressive last year and perhaps it is just the new direction they have decided to take. Brinkman is interesting, they didn't win a single interior contract since 2013 and all of a sudden they got 4. Seneca got a bit more aggressive this year as well which is also interesting as the last time they got that aggressive was in 2012 when it also looks that more tress were available.

Companies such as NGR, Dynamic, Blue Collar and Folklore don't seem like they surfed the wave, and appear less aggressive this year, although NGR and Blue Collar still have a good percentage of this year's trees (they have about the same proportion than Brinkman and Seneca), they were less aggressive in their bids than last year.

Of course, all of this is to take with a grain of salt, there are not as many results available for the first few years (especially 2011), lots of variables than can influence the game, and those are just results for the lowest bidder on each contract.

One thing that I will add to the above comments is an emphasis of the last paragraph ... we've been getting more diligent about tracking down results from a greater number of bids in the past few years, so data from the earlier bidding threads is fairly sporadic and incomplete. The greater quantity of information in the past few years is not something I can take credit for. Although I'm the person who posts a lot of the results, I have several people who send me information when they see it's not posted here within a week or so of it becoming available. Thanks to those contributors, you know who you are.

[Scooter]

And here are the Interior results, again, with the PDF attached to this post.

[Scooter]

A few more results rolling in.

Here are the results for a contract for Planting in Fort Nelson

Contract: PL17TDG001
Client: BCTS Fort Nelson
Season: 2017
# of Trees: 49,300

The trees on this one are being shipped from Campbell River (at the planting company's expense). Odd place to source trees.

01. $ 72,600 - $1.47 per tree - Brinkman
02. $ 82,549 - $1.67 per tree - All Stars
03. $120,752 - $2.45 per tree - Apex

[Scooter]

Here are the results for a contract for Planting in Quesnel

Contract: PL18DQU001
Client: MOFLNO Quesnel
Season; 2017
# of Trees: 422,200

01. $124,057 - 29.4 cents/tree - Dewan
02. $141,770 - 33.6 cents/tree - AKD
03. $171,493 - 40.6 cents/tree - Coast Range
04. $185,768 - 44.0 cents/tree - Integrity Contracting
05. $198,229 - 47.0 cents/tree - Seneca
06. $223,477 - 52.9 cents/tree - Zanzibar
07. $268,587 - 63.6 cents/tree - Fieldstone
08. $279,178 - 66.1 cents/tree - Apex

[Scooter]

Here are the results for a contract for Planting in Clearwater

Contract: PL18DTR001
Client: MOFLNRO Clearwater
Season: 2017
# of Trees: 382,900

I don't have a lot of information about this contract.

01. $243,142 - 63.6 cents/tree - Zanzibar
02. $368,382 - 96.2 cents/tree - A&G
03. $393,111 - $1.03 per tree - Integrity Contracting

[Scooter]

Here are the results for a contract for Planting in Mackenzie

Contract: PL18DMK005
Client: MOFLNRO MacKenzie
Season: Summer 2017
# of Trees: 1,030,000


I previously posted the winner of this bid on January 19th, but didn't have full results at the time. This is a really nice bid - less than 10% difference from lowest to highest. The ground probably isn't very nice, but the consistency of the bids was. Dynamic should be glad to have snuck in just below this year's two over-achievers.

01. $381,719 - 37.1 cents/tree - Dynamic
02. $398,742 - 38.7 cents/tree - Coast Range
03. $411,968 - 40.0 cents/tree - Celtic

[Scooter]

And to wrap up today's additions, here are the results for another contract for Planting in Mackenzie

Contract: PL18DMK004
Client: MOFLNRO Mackenzie
Season: Summer 2017
# of Trees: 1,170,630


This contract is a good example of the mindset that you don't leave the rink just because your team is down three points with four minutes to go in the game. You have to keep watching this thread well past Christmas to catch some of the real stories of the season. Had this bid been included in last week's reports, this would have catapulted Spectrum to the top of a couple of lists, both for "most $$ left on the table for a single bid" (more than double the next in line, and about ten times the average bid), and also would have put them at the top of the list for "most $$ left on the table by a single company, all contracts combined."

Spectrum gets a star for this one. We won't give them a gold star like Apex got. Let's give them a purple star, for doing such a good job of saving the BC taxpayers' money.
(Gold & Silver stars are for "practices which are good for the long-term health of the industry," while other colored stars are for "notable achievements").


01. $ 716,124 - 61.2 cents/tree - Spectrum
02. $ 980,988 - 83.8 cents/tree - Folklore
03. $ 996,206 - 85.1 cents/tree - Dynamic
04. $1,044,217 - 89.2 cents/tree - Artisan
05. $1,087,959 - 92.9 cents/tree - Apex
06. $1,096,050 - 93.6 cents/tree - Blue Collar
07. $1,601,422 - $1.37 cents/tree - Brinkman

[Scooter]

Here's a bit more info about a couple of bids that have allegedly gone up past the lowest bidder to different companies, for various reasons. In some cases, bidders may have elected to turn down the work themselves, and in other cases, bidders may have been disqualified for various reasons. There can be several different reasons for a low bidder not signing the contract.


Contract PL18DQU001 for MOFLNRO Quesnel, which had full results reported here yesterday and partial results here on November 28th, went up past Dewan and was accepted by AKD. We knew this one for certain, as of November 28th, because this one was announced as an awarded contract at that time on BC Bid.

Contract PL18DTR001 for MOFLNRO Clearwater, which had full results reported here yesterday, allegedly went up past Zanzibar to A&G.

Contract PL18TLE001 for BCTS Williams Lake, which had full results reported here on November 7th, allegedly went up past Brinkman to Blue Collar.

[TripleS]

Contract PL18DTR001 for MOFLNRO Clearwater, which had full results reported here yesterday, allegedly went up past Zanzibar to A&G.

I was wondering about that bid from Zanzibar. MASSIVE amount left on the table in terms of percentage. Might be a good contract for A&G.

[Scooter]

Yeah, if they hadn't dropped it, that would be 51.5% left on the table, compared to 43.40% for the next highest % bid (Blue Collar), and when you go down to the fifth biggest percentage out of around fifty jobs, you'd be down to 15.67%.

Technically, this bid should take the award for biggest percentage left on the table, since we've been talking about low bids rather than "accepted" all along, and it's important to be consistent. However, it's also good to point out that Zanzibar was smart enough to realize there was an error, and to pass it on up, even though the dollar amount could probably have been absorbed. Much better that, than to have the company and/or the planters swallow some tough medicine.

[Scooter]

Here are the results for a bid for Planting in Squamish


Contract: PL18LMN200
Client: MOFLNRO Squamish
Season: 2017 (OTR)
# of Trees: 336,160

This one is funded by FFT. It's about 288 hectares of fire-killed plantations in the Boulder Creek fire area in Upper Lillooet. The 2017 portion is spring planting in the Meager Creek area, and is all heli access due to the Meager Creek slide which destroyed the access to the area. Heli staging areas are available across the river from the planting units, and are noted on the maps. The bid includes the contractor being responsible to cover all helicopter costs (people, trees, fertilizer). All of the trees are being ferted.

Had this contract been included in last week's Bid Report, it would have been the second smallest dollar amount left on the table this year.


01. $317,262 - 77.2 cents/tree - Zanzibar
02. $319,378 - 77.7 cents/tree - Nootka
03. $345,268 - 84.0 cents/tree - Leader
04. $359,691 - 87.5 cents/tree - Raven
05. $450,490 - $1.10 per tree - Fieldstone

[Scooter]

We now have seven sets of results since I put together my bid report last week. Plus there are a couple more coming out eventually, over the next month or so.

I may update the report in April to incorporate those results, so we have a more accurate historical record for future years. I'll be planting on the coast at that point, so I can't make any promises. I might be more inclined to maximize sleep when I'm not on the blocks. I think it would be nice to have a more detailed version eventually though, once the season is entirely over. If I eventually amend it, I could also list all the jobs that we know moved up past the lowest bidder, which would be good information to share.

[Gingerplanter]

And to wrap up today's additions, here are the results for another contract for Planting in Mackenzie

Contract: PL18DMK004
Client: MOFLNRO Mackenzie
Season: Summer 2017
# of Trees: 1,170,630


This contract is a good example of the mindset that you don't leave the rink just because your team is down three points with four minutes to go in the game. You have to keep watching this thread well past Christmas to catch some of the real stories of the season. Had this bid been included in last week's reports, this would have catapulted Spectrum to the top of a couple of lists, both for "most $$ left on the table for a single bid" (more than double the next in line, and about ten times the average bid), and also would have put them at the top of the list for "most $$ left on the table by a single company, all contracts combined."

Spectrum gets a star for this one. We won't give them a gold star like Apex got. Let's give them a purple star, for doing such a good job of saving the BC taxpayers' money.
(Gold & Silver stars are for "practices which are good for the long-term health of the industry," while other colored stars are for "notable achievements").


01. $ 716,124 - 61.2 cents/tree - Spectrum
02. $ 980,988 - 83.8 cents/tree - Folklore
03. $ 996,206 - 85.1 cents/tree - Dynamic
04. $1,044,217 - 89.2 cents/tree - Artisan
05. $1,087,959 - 92.9 cents/tree - Apex
06. $1,096,050 - 93.6 cents/tree - Blue Collar
07. $1,601,422 - $1.37 cents/tree - Brinkman

Deleting the two outliers would make the most sense.

[Cyper]

Here's a bit more info about a couple of bids that have allegedly gone up past the lowest bidder to different companies, for various reasons. In some cases, bidders may have elected to turn down the work themselves, and in other cases, bidders may have been disqualified for various reasons. There can be several different reasons for a low bidder not signing the contract.


Contract PL18DQU001 for MOFLNRO Quesnel, which had full results reported here yesterday and partial results here on November 28th, went up past Dewan and was accepted by AKD. We knew this one for certain, as of November 28th, because this one was announced as an awarded contract at that time on BC Bid.

Contract PL18DTR001 for MOFLNRO Clearwater, which had full results reported here yesterday, allegedly went up past Zanzibar to A&G.

Contract PL18TLE001 for BCTS Williams Lake, which had full results reported here on November 7th, allegedly went up past Brinkman to Blue Collar.

The results from the two MOFLNRO jobs listed above as moving to the 2nd bidders were obtained through Freedom of Information requests. MOFLNRO refused to release these results despite repeated requests. Should that make us think something fishy was up? Why would they not want to release bid results for work paid out of the public purse? The law actually requires that they make this information public. I've heard rumours that they fear contractors will pass work on up the line to higher bidders if they see that they're too low - or that god forbid, the next contractor in line is a related company or a friend. Perhaps contractor #2 would pay contractor #1 part of the difference to let the job move up?

The results from the Quesnel bid might be looked at as being suspicious. Is there any link between Dewan and AKD? Did Dewan lose their bid deposit for letting this job go? Both of these bids are significantly lower than all of the others and are both likely very bad bids. With the developing culture of secrecy in the Ministry of Forests we'll probably never know and they certainly don't want us to.

The MOFLNRO Clearwater job that Zanzibar dropped and allowed to get awarded to their good friends A&G might deserve some scrutiny. I don't necessarily think there was any hanky panky on this one but again MOFLNRO's secrecy makes one wonder? Did Zanzibar forfeit their bid deposit? A couple of weeks later they accepted a 1.1 million tree contract for BCTS Cranbrook so it would have been difficult for them to argue that they were full already for that time period. I'd be shocked if they did lose their bid deposit and I'm not lobbying that they should have. However if they didn't, it again points out the uselessness of bid deposits in the first place.

[mwainwright]

Aren't bid deposits no longer required?

[Scooter]

MOFLNRO still requires individual bid deposits on every job. They are almost always $5,000 or $10,000.

BCTS now has a system in place for about 95% of their contracts which is called a "continuous bid deposit." So you can put down a single deposit of $25,000 and it's basically good for the whole bidding season, on all jobs. This replaces the previous individual per-contract deposits of $5,000 or $10,000 on each job.

In the above, I said "about 95%" because I think there was one contract this year, maybe a couple, where a particular BCTS office didn't use that continuous bid deposit, and instead asked for a contract-specific deposit. And I'm going by memory here, and may be incorrect. It may have been used universally this past viewing season.

There's a rule in place so if someone forfeits a deposit, it's not the whole $25,000 - it's a smaller amount like $5,000 or $10,000 or whatever the deposit would have been IF the individual deposit system had been used for that contract. I forget how it works. Not really critical info - the key takeaway is that when they moved to the bigger single deposit of $25,000, this didn't increase the risk to contractors that all of a sudden they could lose a much bigger amount if they dropped the job.

Also, deposits aren't used 100% of the time. I think there's maybe an average of about one job per season (I could be wrong) where the forester doesn't bother asking for a deposit. I think that usually happens on very small jobs and/or when the forester is pretty confident that whoever has the low bid won't want to back out.

Hopefully I got all of the above information correct. I haven't had my morning coffee.

[Cyper]

For the 2017 spring season and as a rule, MOFL required 10% bid deposits, so these can be quite substantial. Kamloops, Castlegar, Squamish and Clearwater all required 10% while Quesnel and 100 Mile House didn't require a bid deposit at all. The only BCTS office that didn't require a bid deposit (that I'm aware of) was Clearwater when they tendered their summer plant very late in the bidding season. Typically BCTS requires a $10,000 bid deposit but in some cases asks for 10% up to a maximum of $25,000, which just happens to be the amount of the new Continuous Bid Deposit Scooter mentioned above. I'm not aware of any contract where the Continuous Bid Deposit couldn't be used.

[Scooter]

Sorry, I thought only the Performance Deposits were percentage-based.

[Scooter]

Here are the results for a contract for Planting in Vanderhoof

Contract: PL18DVA003
Client: MOFLNRO Vanderhoof
Season: Spring 2017
# of Trees: 411,650

This is a small-scale salvage planting contract, with a large number of small blocks, hence the prices which are higher than is typical for the area.

01. $200,306 - 48.7 cents/tree - Integrity Contracting (Seth MacDonald)
02. $209,161 - 50.1 cents/tree - Folklore
03. $235,372 - 57.2 cents/tree - Apex
04. $263,869 - 64.1 cents/tree - Seneca

[Scooter]

On January 18th, I posted the following results:

Here are the results for a contract for Planting in 100 Mile House

Contract: PL18DMH001
Client: MOFLNRO 100 Mile House
Season: Spring 2017
# of Trees: 976,600

01. $343,570 - 35.2 cents/tree - Dynamic
02. $366,660 - 37.5 cents/tree - Blue Collar
03. $390,960 - 40.0 cents/tree - Integrity Contracting (Seth)
04. $443,408 - 45.4 cents/tree - Apex
05. $447,624 - 45.8 cents/tree - Folklore
06. $450,495 - 46.1 cents/tree - All Stars

I've been told that there was a math error in this bid, and that after the error was corrected, Blue Collar turned out to be the low bidder. I'm uncertain about whether the error originated in the Dynamic bid, the Blue Collar bid, or the MOFLNRO office itself. Regardless, that doesn't matter.

Blue Collar's portfolio of low-bid work is suddenly starting to increase quite rapidly in comparison to what it appeared that they had at the start of January.

[Scooter]

Update: Winning bid by Blue Collar on the PL18DMH001 job in 100 Mile House, after their math was corrected (someone added up all the individual block bids incorrectly when submitted their bid), turned out to be $326,862. That dropped them below Dynamic to become the lowest bid.

[Scooter]

Here are the results for a contract for Planting in Terrace

Contract: PL18TIF102
Client: BCTS Terrace
Season: Spring/Fall 2017
# of Trees: 383,406

Here's the description from BC Bid:

This contract is located in various sites within the Terrace and Nass Areas, for Spring and Fall Tree Planting of approximately 383,406 seedlings, with 121,680 seedlings scheduled for Spring Planting, and 261,726 seedlings for Fall Planting.

Very nice grouping on this one. Only 8% difference in bids from lowest to highest.

01. $215,441 - 52.4 cents/tree - Osprey
02. $219,564 - 53.4 cents/tree - Little Trees
03. $221,354 - 53.8 cents/tree - Anspayaxw
04. $232,667 - 56.6 cents/tree - Brinkman

[Scooter]

More analysis, from another regular viewer of this site! This post is about an analysis of "dollars left on the table" in 2017, and is based on 49 currently-known bids (ie. includes coastal bids, although not the PL18TBJ002 job that is mostly non-planting).

This person also backed up their summary charts with a full set of spreadsheets that were used to create the summaries, but I'm only posting the summaries.

This contributor also noted that, to the best of their knowledge, the number of multi-year contracts that were awarded in past seasons but renewed in 2017 accounts for another 7,903,000 trees, based on contracts being of the same volume as year 1 numbers. Of course, this will be off by a bit, and assumes that all contracts were actually renewed, but it's a good way to estimate the hidden renewal volumes. If this number was accurate, this would bring the previously-discussed 2017 totals up fairly significantly.

Also, I'll be posting one more summary later tonight or tomorrow, also provided by the same contributor, which brings some really new long-term analysis into our understanding of five-year trends in bidding.

[Scooter]

Associated with the above is this additional summary of "Dollars Left On The Table."

This chart is based on the Interior bids only, due to the wide fluctuations in coastal pricing due to add-ons such as staking, ferts, man-days, heli/barge access, etc. While the items in those six contracts could arguably be included in this chart, it would lead to a much wider standard deviation.

So for the 43 Interior contracts, we can see the following info:

- 253 bids were placed on the 43 contracts, resulting in an average of 5.88 bidders on each contract.
- The average bid price per tree, overall, was 38.8 cents/tree.
- The average bid was $473,894, and the average number of trees per contract was 1,220,600.
- The average amount left on the table was $31,014, which worked out to 2.54 cents/tree.
- For Winning bids only, not all bids, the average price per tree was 32.9 cents.

These numbers will tie in with the addition five-year trend summary that will be coming shortly.

[Scooter]

And here's the really interesting one. A summary based on several years of analysis.

Note that, as per reasons in the previous two posts, this summary is based solely on Interior bids.

Notable inferences that can be drawn from this chart, at least from my own point of view:

1. Average bid prices were back up this year, which I didn't expect.

2. The number of trees this year was significantly more than in any of the past years (more FFT work?). And this doesn't even factor in carry-overs from multi-year contracts.

3. The average number of trees per contract, province wide, has remained stunningly consistent over the past several years. I would have thought there would be a big jump this year, based on the handful of very large contracts of over three million trees.

4. The amount of money left on the table by bidders, expressed as a province-wide per tree average, has been fairly consistent except for 2016 work.

5. The average number of bidders per contract this year seems to be down slightly from the average of the past several years, but it's too soon to see if this is a statistically significant change, or just a one-year aberration. If it is statistically significant, why is this the case?


I should also point out that the significant weakness of this chart is that I wasn't as diligent in past years about trying to find all possible public-bid results. These numbers were based on the bids posted here on the Replant message board, and I think we probably missed quite a few more bids in past years than we did this year. Going forward, this is a good reason to try to be diligent about posting as much information as possible.

[Scooter]

The bidding thread seems like the perfect place to post this graphic that I just found:

[Scooter]

Here are the results for a contract for Planting in the Fraser Valley

Contract: PL17LMN007
Client: MOFLNRO Chilliwack
Season: 2017/2018
# of Trees: 334,500

Here's the description of the contract from BC Bid:

PL17LMN007: Planting approximately 334,500 trees on an estimated 296.2 hectares - Wood Lake 2015 fire, Grizzly Creek 2015 fire, Tsileuh/Black Creeks 2004 fire/replant and Jones Lake Forestry Licence to Cut. The work includes danger-proofing the planting sites by assessing all potentially dangerous trees that may affect the planting operation and falling danger trees or marking/mapping no treatment zones where falling is deemed unsafe. This is a multi-year contract extending from February 2017 to the end of March 2018.

All wildfire work, all trees getting ferts. Potentially lots of DTA and fall, although they allow flagging of No Work Zones. Some heli.

01. $205,992 - 61.6 cents/tree - Fieldstone
02. $208,239 - 62.3 cents/tree - Leader
03. $381,909 - 84.3 cents/tree - Zanzibar
04. $311,401 - 93.1 cents/tree - Osprey

[Scooter]

A few more late results for the Dawson Creek area. No surprises here ... going to the usual suspects.

Here are the results for a pair of contracts for Planting in the Peace-Liard region


Contract: PL18TDF001
Client: BCTS Peace-Liard
# of Trees: 1,979,894
Season: Summer 2017

01. $ 623,518 - 24.2 cents/tree - Celtic
02. $ 631,039 - 24.5 cents/tree - Coast Range
03. $ 762,893 - 29.6 cents/tree - Dynamic
04. $1,228,043 - 47.6 cents/tree - Apex




Contract: PL18TDF002
Client: BCTS Peace-Liard
# of Trees: 972,254
Season: Summer 2017

01. $304,313 - 31.3 cents/tree - Coast Range
02. $397,746 - 40.9 cents/tree - Dynamic
03. $625,924 - 64.4 cents/tree - Apex

Coast Range must be particularly proud of setting the new 2017 record for highest percentage of money left on the table, at over 30%. Two other bidders (on other jobs) did leave more on the table than the $93,433 that Coast Range threw away here, but those other two were on larger jobs. Luckily for Coast Range planters, it's not a huge job. Just a million trees.

[Mike]

Late to the show and not saying much;

Contractors are barely on speaking terms as it is

WCSA conference says otherwise. But no, I don't collusion is a problem, either.

Great thread, so much info here...now if more than a handful of planters would look at it.

[Scooter]

Here are the results for a contract for Planting in Quesnel

Contract: PL18TLH005
Client: MOFLNRO Quesnel
Number of Trees: 246,370

01. $ 98,766 - 40.1 cents/tree - AKD
02. $108,311 - 44.0 cents/tree - Seneca

It looks like this contract may have used the BCTS Contractor Rating System, even though it was for MOF?

[Scooter]

I wonder how the season is going at Celtic and Coast Range.

If your business mantra is to focus solely on growth, then you probably also think that cancer is a good thing.

[Tnalp]

Elaborate please!

[retrovertigo]

there was a Coast Range crew a few km down from us doing a full replant of a 50k block on tue/wed

[TripleS]

^^That has to be good for the trees.

[whitepickup]

Document number: PL18TCG005
Title: Fall 2017 and Spring 2018 Tree Planting, Campbell River

Results published after closing time. Posted on Wednesday 23 Aug 2017 at 02:30 PM
Number of tenders received: 3

The following entities provided responses:
1)
Leader Silviculture Ltd. - 3
$423,522.00

2)
Fieldstone Resources Ltd. - 2
$387,742.00

3)
Evergreen Forest Services Ltd. - 1
$361,082.50


This information is unverified and provided prior to determining compliancy or completing any evaluation process. Each response is subject to review and evaluation in accordance with criteria stated within the competitive bid documents. Therefore, conclusions should not be drawn from this information regarding the eventual final ranking of bids or submissions.

[ShazzaCon]

Can't be great - CR abandoned their contract in Fort St. John.

I wonder how the season is going at Celtic and Coast Range.