EXHIBIT 1
May 4, 2015
Brenda Billingsley, Director
Broward County Purchasing Division
115 South Andrews Avenue
Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
RE:
R1214808P1 - RFP FOR JANITORIAL SERVICES FOR VARIOUS COUNTY
FACILITIES - ADDITIONAL SERVICES
Dear Ms. Billingsley:
I write to bring to your attention certain information and observations regarding the
Additional Services section of the referenced RFP for Janitorial Services for Various
County Facilities. We believe that the RFP response on the Additional Services,
particularly Carpet Deep Cleaning, reflect that the vast majority of proposers were
confused by the poor and inadequate spreadsheet creation and specificity of the
pricing sheets for the Additional Services: Carpet Deep Cleaning. We have thoroughly
reviewed all of the proposals in the preparation of this letter with the exception of
Stockton Maintenance Group (SMG) whose pricing sheets were never provided per
our Public Records Request.
It is always your and the County's desire to avoid delays, do-overs and protests. And
it is also an articulated County policy to include as many proposers as possible in the
process to optimize competition and also to provide opportunities for CBE firms.
Therefore, given the significant confusion reflected by proposers relative to the
Additional Services pricing sheets, and inasmuch as the information in these
spreadsheet cells were largely excluded from overall pricing, scoring or evaluation
criteria, it is suggested that the County's policies can be best effected by deleting this
line item for Carpet Deep Cleaning from consideration in the evaluation and ranking
of the proposals. To the degree that the County may require Additional Services in
the future, the County could negotiate pricing during negotiations with the topranked firms or the County could choose to procure such services separately if it were
deemed to be in the best interest of the County.
In addition, we call to your attention that Carpet Deep Cleaning is already included in
the overall pricing for the contracts as it is listed in the Frequencies & Procedures for
Cleaning contained in the General Specifications and Requirements Document of the
RFP outlined in the tasks below.
May 4, 2015
Brenda Billingsley
RE: RFP FOR JANITORIAL SERVICES FOR VARIOUS COUNTY FACILITIES - ADDITIONAL SERVICES
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Table 1: Tasks
o Hot Water Extraction Carpet Floors Entryway Systems Weekly
o Hot Water Extraction Carpet Floors Walk-Off Carpet Weekly
o Hot Water Extraction Carpet Floors High Traffic Areas Quarterly
o Hot Water Extraction Carpet Floors All Other Areas Semi-Annually
Table 2: Hot Water Extraction
o Entryway Systems Weekly
o Walk-Off Carpet Weekly
o High Traffic Areas Quarterly
Table 2: Carpet Floors Spot Cleaning Carpet Floors Daily
Table 4: Annual Air Quality: Clean all carpet areas using HEPA filtered hot water
extraction system. Annually
Frequencies & Procedures for Cleaning contained in the General Specifications and
Requirements Document of the RFP also states:
All frequencies listed below are considered to be minimum service levels. If
increased frequencies are needed to meet the performance standards the increased
frequency will be provided at no additional cost to County.
It therefore appears that it is duplicative to ask for a price for Carpet Deep Cleaning
since it is specified that any additional services to be used for Carpet Deep Cleaning
would be provided at no additional cost to County. Given the lack of clarity on how to
respond to this line item and the fact that the additional services must in any event
be provided at no additional cost it would seem to be in the County’s best interest to
delete it entirely.
None of the proposers could properly enter values into the fields for Carpet Deep
Cleaning due to the lack of guidance from the pricing sheets. Those who were deemed
responsive for this line item either agreed verbally to do the service for free upon
being made aware of their omission, provided unspecified unit pricing which did not
tally into the Grand Total price do to the omission of any formulas, or provided
arbitrary prices not based on any tangible information provided by the County. Some
proposals were found to be preliminarily responsive whether the figures they
entered for Carpet Deep Cleaning were added to the Grand Total Price or not. This
created a situation where imbalanced proposals would be compared. Over 80% of
proposers either omitted pricing for Carpet Deep Cleaning or did not add the values
for Year 1 and Year 2 to their overall price, a clear indicator that this line item and
spreadsheet formation was flawed.
Kindly consider this letter as a constructive suggestion as to how Broward County can
preserve this RFP, include a myriad of companies which were preliminarily deemed
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May 4, 2015
Brenda Billingsley
RE: RFP FOR JANITORIAL SERVICES FOR VARIOUS COUNTY FACILITIES - ADDITIONAL SERVICES
non-responsive on the Draft Memorandum and ensure that the County complies with
the RFP and the Procurement Code.
Attached is a summary of our findings based on our in-depth review of the Pricing
responses in the proposals received from companies in the referenced RFP.
Very truly yours,
George I.
Platt
Digitally signed by George I. Platt
DN: cn=George I. Platt, o=LSN
Partners, LLC, ou,
[email protected],
c=US
Date: 2015.05.05 12:01:59 -04'00'
George I. Platt
Attachment
cc:
Erick Martinez, CPPB
Glenn Miller, Assistant County Attorney
Larry Calufetti, President & CEO, Sunshine Cleaning Systems
Bernie Friedman, Esq.
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