Recycling contract awarded to nonexistent company

City Council has awarded a multi-million-dollar, ten-year recycling contract to a company that doesn't exist, based on criteria that were 50 percent subjective.

Subject to a successful outcome from final contract negotiations, Council last night awarded the job to Green Circle Environmental, which intends to build a new municipal recycling facility at 2125 Great Northern Road.

For background information about the contract, click here.

Glen Skagen (shown above), district manager with unsuccessful bidder Canadian Waste Services, attended last night's Council meeting and expressed concern that the contract was awarded to Green Circle Environmental even though that company doesn't formally exist.

The new company is to be formed by two other Sault firms, Sault Ste. Marie Disposal and Brandes Aggregates, but it wasn't considered necessary to incorporate prior to winning the contract.

Skagen, whose company has handled the Sault's recycling needs since 1990, is also concerned that insufficient weight was placed on his firm's experience in handling recyclables, or on his willingness to buy the City's existing recycling facility.

The process

Here's the process used by the City to award the tender:

- A bidders meeting was held March 7 at the Civic Centre. Ten contractors attended

- Three contractors then submitted sealed proposals. These were Canadian Waste Services Inc., Green Circle Environmental, and Municipal Waste and Recycling Consultants.

- A proposal evaluation committee was established, consisting of three staffers from the City Engineering Department, three from the Public Works staff, and three from a consultant study team.

- The committee weighed the three proposals according to the following criteria: cost (50%), interviews (12%), ability to commence operations in a timely manner (2%), flexibility of system and ability to handle additional throughput (6%), ability to service multi-residential and IC&I sector (6%), plan for advertising and promotion (4%), ability to provide additional service cost-effectively (5%), overall design issues and equipment performance record (5%), experience of the contractor and personnel assigned (10%). These criteria were established before the applicants were known.

- After an initial evaluation, Municipal Waste and Recycling Consultants were removed from the process because they were more than 12 points behind the other two bidders.

- After interviews on June 12, five members of the evaluation committee preferred Green Circle Environmental, three favoured Canadian Waste Services Inc., and one member's scores favoured both companies equally.

Committee preferred Green Circle

Green Circle was presented to Council last night as the preferred bidder.

Skagen asked councillors to reconsider that choice, but they nonetheless voted to award the contract to the new company.

City staff explained that there was little concern that the new company will be incorporated, because its principals were required to submit a $60,000 bid deposit, which would be lost of they failed to create the new firm.

Was this process fair?

What do you think about the process used to award this contract, and the outcome? We welcome you to post your comments by proceeding to SooToday's editorial page and clicking on the News Response button.