The state government’s buy-local policy has come under fire after Geraldton-based Mitchell and Brown recently missed out on a $1 million tender to supply a local high-school with 700 laptop computers.
The state government’s buy-local policy has come under fire after Geraldton-based Mitchell and Brown recently missed out on a $1 million tender to supply a local high-school with 700 laptop computers.
Mitchell and Brown claims its tender was $50,000 cheaper than the winning tender from Winthrop Australia and involved supplying the same computers as well as providing free internet for students for a three-year period through its associated company, Westnet, which it valued at $500,000.
Mitchell and Brown managing director Barry Mitchell also said that regional buying provisions brought his bid an additional $50,000 under that of Winthrop.
Mr Mitchell said he was told by the Department of Education and Training that his tender responses were not strong enough.
Mid-West Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Melanie Davies said Mitchell and Brown was one of several businesses to miss out on local tenders in the past few years.
“We feel there needs to be a review set up by the government to find out what the obstacles for business are,” Ms Davies said.
“We hope the government takes this issue up because it just can’t keep happening.”
Mr Mitchell said he would continue to discuss the tender process with relevant government departments because he wanted the people involved to “accept that they could have done it better”.
“I’m not looking to win the contract now, but if something similar comes up again things should be different,” he said.
“The process and tender evaluation needs to be looked at. We are not looking to put a rocket on the moon, it is to supply computers.”
Mr Mitchell said many local businesses found the tender process difficult. He pointed to a requirement in his tender criteria that other projects of a similar size in which the company had been involved be highlighted.
The requirement to prove similar experience made it more difficult for a smaller business to win the tender, even though it may have the capabilities, Mr Mitchell said.
“Straight away we get a bad score because we haven’t done it before,” he told WA Business News.
A spokeswoman for another Geraldton-based business, who declined to be named, said her company was so fed up with the tender process that it no longer pursued the bulk of them.
“We have missed out on a lot of government tenders even though we are the cheapest,” she said.
“The trouble we find is that there is no common format. It would be better if there was a form you could fill out that had dot points that covered things like the price and whether or not that includes GST so you can compare apples with apples.”
Mr Mitchell has also raised questions about the legitimacy of claims made by non-local companies that they will contract local companies to fulfil part of the contract.
In its tender document for the John Willcock College computer supply contract, Mitchell and Brown highlighted concerns about its name being used by another company in a previous tender.
Mr Mitchell told WA Business News this week that the company he referred to in his tender document was Winthrop.
He alleges Winthrop put in a supply contract tender, along with Apple Computers, for John Willcock College about three years ago and claimed Mitchell and Brown would provide local support services.
However, Mr Mitchell said this was not the case and his company had originally been working with Winthrop and computer group Acer to bid on the same tender, which was eventually won by the Winthrop and Apple consortium.
In its latest tender, Mitchell and Brown told the evaluation panel that its company was “exploited…to gain regional preferences in the previous contract without any prior commitment”.
Mr Mitchell said there needed to be more checks in place.
“People are getting local preferences for saying they will use x y z and then not using them; who checks on that?” he said.
A spokeswoman for the DET said she was unable to discuss details of individual tenders but said there was “a formal process that validates claims made by companies against the selection criteria”.
She said all tendering processes were conducted in strict accordance with State Supply Commission policies and rules.
“Government agencies must explore the capability of local businesses to meet requirements and ensure that quotations and tenders are designed to accommodate the capabilities of local businesses,” the spokeswoman said.
Mr Mitchell said he was happy with the government’s process for government contracts under $100,000 because local people were in charge of assessing the tenders.
A spokesman for Winthrop Australia did not return calls from WA Business News.
