AUGUSTA, Maine — The losing bidder for a state natural gas contract has filed a formal appeal asking the state to reconsider its decision to award the contract to another company.
Summit Natural Gas of Maine narrowly lost the bid, documents filed with the Bureau of General Services show.
The winning bidder was Maine Natural Gas Corp.
The state asked for bids from companies to supply natural gas to state property on both sides of the Kennebec River in Augusta.
Maine Today Media reports Maine Natural Gas proposed a $19.3 million project with 46 jobs.
Summit proposed a $150 million project with 435 jobs and service to 15,000 customers as well as state property in Augusta and Gardiner.
The disparity between the bids is one reason Summit asked the state Thursday to reconsider.
I must be missing something here. It says that ” Summit Natural Gas of Maine narrowly lost the bid” and yet they bid 150 million when the winning contractor bid only 19.3 million. I’m no genius by any means but even I know there’s a huge difference between 150 and 19.3. Were they even bidding on the same thing.
I would say they were offering bids with different proposals. Otherwise, why would the higher bidder want to contest the bidding in court? I’m sure we will hear more details about the project as readers and affected residents of the project start to ask pointed questions. With that, it’s good to hear that a cheaper energy source is being made available to more Mainers. Let’s hope and pray this project doesn’t get tied up in the court system for long.
You are right. There is an article in the Kennebec Journal that explains the discrepancies much better. They may actually have a claim here.
http://www.kjonline.com/news/firm-appealsloss-of-stategas-contract_2012-07-05.html?cmpid=morning-news-update-html
Thank you for the link reference. It looks like objective criteria was used to determine the winner who edged out the loser. Not wanting to judge what happened in this bidding war, I believe the bidding process on state projects is like a shell game where the best bitter doesn’t always come out on top. Numbers unfortunately don’t always tell all or tell who has the best cost-effective proposal.
He’s trying to save the taxpayers dollars.How awful!
I agree. Some people will never get themselves able to give the governor any credit where credit is due. It appears to be beneath them. Right now they must be losing a lot of sleep fearing the sky will fall while the governor has 2 and 1/2 more years left in his term of office. Somebody ought to notify the ambulance crew in case they don’t make it through this period.
If you’re building a 2 billion dollar ship, would you take the bid from someone who said they could do it for 1 billion???
Likely, no. I’ll take the more realistic estimate. Low ball offers usually result in overages and shoddy work.
Palm grease.