[kazinator]

Ah, but in what way is the under-bidding contractor the problem?

Who gave the contract to the contractor?

The problem is the process of going for the lowest bidder, or one of the lowest.

Moreover, in this case, incredibly, going for the same low bidder with the knowledge of all the history of the bids from that contractor being unrealistic lowballs and requiring costly change requests.

Don't blame the contractor. They get the job and make their money. From their angle, they are successful. They know that the city is aiming for the bottom and so they adjust their bidding accordingly. If they didn't submit a low bid, the job would go to someone else.

True story: some decades ago. My father was bidding on a contract with the GVRD (Greater Vancouver Regional District). Something in the tens of thousands of dollars, probably. He was out-bid by $5. That was all they cared about. So he pulled out a $5 bill and plonked it on the table.

If you ever drive in Vancouver, Canada and wonder how the roads can be so shitty, remember that story.

[tshaddox]

> The problem is the process of going for the lowest bidder, or one of the lowest.

The phrase "lowest bidder" gets a lot of mileage in jokes and social commentary, but I'm pretty sure that the original idea is "the lowest bidder who fulfills the requirements of the contract." In that context it's a pretty obvious process, not something to be feared or mocked. The contract should be "build X to exactly these specifications," and of course the contract should be given to the lowest bidder who can reasonably be expected to fulfill the contract.

In this case, the contractor is clearly unable (or unwilling, or unincentivized) to fulfill the contract, and thus the contractor's bid should be irrelevant. The contractor should not even be considered. After all, if it's fine to not fulfill the terms of the contract, then I'm confident I could submit an even lower bid.

[wahern]

I think the issue in California is that this particular contractor's M.O. is notorious to state officials, but nobody has completed whatever formal processes are required to establish the contractor as disreputable, permitting officials to readily reject their bids in subsequent projects. There has to be a formal process because the whole point of anti-corruption regulations is to remove discretion from individual officials, but state officials aren't being diligent on the backend of that process.

The underbidding contractor is at least one half of the problem because they're serial fraudulent bidders--they have it down to a science. IMO they're flat out the problem from an ethical standpoint. You don't get to cheat somebody just because you've figured out how to exploit a victim's infirmity (the infirmity in this case being the state's bidding rules). You can't shift your blame to the victim; whatever blame the victim is due is independent.

[kasey_junk]

Lots of places have legal requirements to take low bid contracts. This was largely an anti-corruption measure as it was deemed easier to get work out of a low bid contractor than an accurate accounting out of a corrupt process.

But now there exist a whole class of contractor that exist purely to provide the lowest possible level of compliance with municipal contracts. They spend more on legal defense than construction in many cases.

[kelnos]

Certainly CA shares blame for not managing their contracts better (whether due to incompetence or malice).

But it's unethical behavior to be a contractor who intentionally under-bids with the plan to later (repeatedly) charge exorbitant amounts for modifications and fixes.

The government isn't doing its due diligence, but I take a dim view of people who exploit and waste taxpayers' money.

[kazinator]

> But it's unethical behavior to be a contractor who intentionally under-bids with the plan to later (repeatedly) charge exorbitant amounts for modifications and fixes.

If the ethical alternatives all ensure that someone else gets the contract, then that particular ethics in that situation is rather good for nothing.

[kelnos]

I'll never claim that taking the ethical choice will ensure that others won't choose unethically. But "everyone else is doing it" is not an excuse for unethical behavior.

Suggesting that ethics are good for nothing in this case because of that is... well, even more disappointingly cynical than I'm willing to go.

[jobu]

> The problem is the process of going for the lowest bidder, or one of the lowest.

As a homeowner I usually try to get three bids on a project and then take the middle. In my experience the lowest bidder usually doesn't understand what you want or has no idea what they're doing.