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Construction bid process a mess

It is easy to understand why officials of a construction company who thought they had landed a lucrative state contract, only to have that decision rescinded in favor of another firm, are angry about the situation.

It also is easy to see the latter firm’s point, that it submitted the low bid and merited the contract.

Neither company is in the wrong. Who is? The state of West Virginia, which created the mess through shoddy handling of the bid process. Now the state Supreme Court has to sort it out.

Earlier this year, the Lottery Commission agreed to a $7.6 million project to remodel a building in Charleston. Bid documents were sent out by the state Purchasing Division. When proposals were received, Maynard C. Smith?Construction was the low bidder, by $174,000.

Wiseman was given the go-ahead, however, because it was found MCS had not included three required references. MCS then took the Lottery Commission to court, where a circuit judge ordered it should get the contract.

Wiseman’s appeal is now being considered by the Supreme Court.

There, an attorney for the state has admitted “irregularities” in the bid process resulted in “problems in fairly awarding the contract.” One of them was that despite requiring the three references, bid documents did not include a form on which to list them.

It is impossible to say how the high court will rule. One way or another, officials of one of the construction companies will be very unhappy.

And not without reason.

Handling big construction bid processes is a complex affair. But at the local and state levels, it occurs dozens of times, perhaps more, every year in West Virginia. Somehow, public entities manage to get it right.

The current fiasco gives state government a black eye and is likely to make it more difficult to obtain construction bids in the future. That may make such work more costly for taxpayers.

So, regardless of what happens in this case, state officials should make a clean breast of what went wrong – what person or persons made the mistakes – and what will be done to avoid similar ones in the future. And, of course, there should be disciplinary action if human error was involved, as it seems was the case.

Any bets on whether that happens? Given the history of how disciplinary action is handled at all levels of government – it isn’t, most of the time – the safe bet on this one is obvious.

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