Optimizing for value
Or why the dictatorship of the lowest bid gives us shit infrastructure.
Everybody wants to save money but nobody wants to be the idiot buying something shitty just because it’s cheap. Quebec is moving forward with a measure aimed at preventing this common mistake and we should all be tripping over ourselves in our rush to imitate them.
The goal is two-fold: To stop buying cheap junk and to encourage decision-makers to buy from Quebec providers when attributing public contracts.
Currently, the lowest price accounts for 72% of the evaluation criteria. France-Élaine Duranceau, the minister responsible for public administration, wants that dropped to two-thirds. This makes a difference.
To implement this new guideline, some 800 public employees who handle procurement and contracts will have to get special training. The goal is to “break the culture” of the cheapest bid, which is plaguing public contracts everywhere and resulting, according to many experts who work in the field, in roads that fall apart, bridges that fall down, sidewalks full of cracks and ugly buildings everywhere.
Moving forward, Quebec will demand — in addition to metrics that quantify value for money — more criteria related to quality from people who bid for public contracts. According to sources, the move away from the dictatorship of the lowest bid should favour Quebec-based providers. Currently, the goal is to have 50% of public contracts go to Quebec businesses there’s talk of making that even higher.
How refreshing! Instead of systematically going with the cheapest bid and getting depressingly mediocre (if not worse) results, how about we buy the best value for the money we’re choosing to spend or invest? Isn’t this what most of us do in our lives? We all want value, not just cost savings. Because we all know that optimizing for cheap gets you a shitty product that doesn’t last.
The least we should do is have the same kind of calculation, the same kind of cost-benefit analysis, apply when we spend millions of tax dollars on public assets.
I have never understood why people do not get it that something contractually cheaper whether clothes, a house, a skyscraper, a plane, is so because corners are cut, inferior materials are used rendering the product suspect - and often dangerous. Doing it on the cheap - redos are necessary - squandering money. Why is this so difficult to learn? Is it because you have to care first?
em in Paris - door is open BP