The Haines Borough this week took a step backward on the Lutak Dock project, rescinding the Request for Qualifications it issued on Aug. 11.
The borough first decided to extend the deadline and then withdrew the request altogether after several interested companies contacted the municipality with questions about the document, interim public facilities director Brian Lemcke said this week.
“Virtually all of the proposers had questions. It became very clear I hadn’t crafted that correctly,” Lemcke said.
The request for qualifications asked companies to provide a “proposed project budget with breakdown of personnel costs, reimbursable expenses and other costs,” which was confusing, as the borough hasn’t decided what kind of project it wants to pursue at the dock, Lemcke said.
“I got beyond what the true definition of an RFQ is. What really triggered it was the cost proposal thing,” he said. “It was more, in my mind, that we were asking for what generally their fees would be, like almost a percentage figure or something like that.”
Paul Wallis, a senior structural engineer with the Anchorage-based firm Moffatt and Nichol, contacted the borough with his concerns. The tight deadline – a 17-day window – paired with the document’s references to a “proposed project budget” and “cost of services” made it more akin to a Request for Proposals, he said.
“It loses any semblance of a simple request for qualifications,” Wallis said. “It’s now a cost-competitive solicitation.”
Lemcke, who left his position as interim public facilities director this week, said the next facilities director will try to get more input from the manager’s Lutak Dock working group and reach out to other communities to look at their templates for RFQs.
“This is kind of good that it happened, because we don’t want to get (this large of a project) off on the wrong foot,” Lemcke said.
The RFQ should be reissued in several weeks, he said.