Ascension Parish School Board awards school construction project to a different bidder after protest – The Advocate

What a difference two words can make.

The lack of the words "sealed bid" on the envelopes of two of the bids for a major Ascension Parish School System project had led district officials to decide against opening those bids and the School Board to award the project to a firm that had those two words on its envelope

But in an unusual twist this week, the School Board rescinded its award of a construction bid to one company and gave it to one of those two firms after the board's attorney cited a state Supreme Court ruling that appears to support such a move.

The School Board on March 7 had accepted a $3.5 million bid to renovate flood-damaged St. Amant Primary School from the apparent low bidder, McInnis Brothers of Minden, one of six bidders for the project.

DONALDSONVILLE The Ascension Parish School Board this week approved the apparent low bid o

Two additional companies also submitted bids, but those remained unopened because the outer envelopes of their bid documents weren't marked according to specifications, School Board attorney Jeff Diez said at Tuesday's School Board meeting.

The envelopes didn't have the words "sealed bid" on them, Diez said.

One of those two companies, Stuart and Company of Baton Rouge, protested the awarding of the project to McKinnis Brothers, citing a 2016 Louisiana Supreme Court ruling, Diez said.

Tuesday's School Board meeting ended with the board rescinding its award of the project to McInnis Brothers and, instead, accepting the bid of Stuart and Company, whose bid came around $3.2 million, some$265,000 lower than the McInnis bid.

The second previously unopened bid was also opened last week, said the school district's director of planning and construction, Chad Lynch, but did not come in lower than that of either the Stuart company or the McInnis company.

Diez said after Tuesday's meeting that public agencies require the words "sealed bid" on a bid's envelope as a practical measure, to make sure an employee opening mail doesn't accidentally open a public bid, which is required to remain sealed until all bids are opened at the same time.

"We knew they did not open the bid (originally) because of a minor infraction that's not in the public bid law. It was something added to the specs," Chris Stuart, president and chief executive officer of Stuart and Company, said Wednesday.

"We petitioned them to open it (the bid) and when we did, everything took its course," Stuart said. "At the end, it comes down to two things: We're going to get the job done for the (new) school year and the taxpayers will save $265,000."

A message left Wednesday with the McInnis Brothers company had not been returned by the end of the day.

The state Supreme Court ruling was made in April 2016 in a lawsuit Durr Heavy Construction filed against the City of New Orleans.

The company had filed a protest with the city after it awarded a project to a bidder whose bid came in an envelope not filled out as specified.

The city denied the protest, and the Durr company took its case to district court, which ruled against the firm, then to the state's 4th Circuit Court of Appeal, which ruled in Durr's favor.

The state Supreme Court's ruling last spring reversed the ruling of the appellate court.

"It's not gotten a lot of publicity," Diez said Wednesday of the ruling. "We all need to be mindful of the case and how it applies to public projects and public bidding going forward."

Follow Ellyn Couvillion on Twitter, @EllynCouvillion.

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Ascension Parish School Board awards school construction project to a different bidder after protest - The Advocate