The mandatory pre-bid meeting is part of the attempt to get decent honest contractors.  It at least cuts out the ones that would bid the work without seeing it at all.

jc: Boy... it must be nice in the West.

Public Work: The mandatory prebid meeting attended by the laborer of the GC, or the retired father, does not lead to anyone bidding on anything that they have ever seen, then again I've seen plenty of blind contractors at the mandatories. Neither does it mean that they will think to read the specs. Nor does it mean that those who will do the estimate, the office estimators, will have ever seen the work. Nor does it mean that the contractor will bid with any knowledge or intention of actually doing the work as it is specified. What it does mean is that the contractors who do pay attention will know what all the crap (the stuff meant to scare away the shy but ignorant) is they have to make sure is covered in their bid, immediatly putting them in the one place where nothing works, being the higher, but often most appropriate, bidder.

All the bidders know is that the less they know about the job, the less they know about doing business, the less they know about the Secretary of Interior Standards, the less they give a shit -- the lower their price will be. The low price wins. Stupid dumbshit contractors will always be the low bidder. If they go out of business, from underbidding, there is another dozen waiting in line to fill the gap. If they get the low bid, well, then, they have the job and they go around shopping to all the skilled folks to see which ones are so damned hungry that they will prostrate themselves, their reputation, and their margins in order to survive. Owners seem to ALWAYS be pressed to go with the low bidder I think in part because the owners are just as dumb as the dumb ass contractors.

So I bid on this nice little arch in NYC and before I even got back to the office from the bid opening the low bidder, who had not attended the opening, was calling me and wanted to know why his price was so much lower than mine. He can't read English, but his estimators can, and they put the bid together. He made his secured bid, the city is taking him up on it, and the city will get what they pay for... just like with Brooklyn Borough Hall where every twenty years they need to replace the terne coated stainelss steel roof. The unseen cost to the taxpayers of the democratic "low bid" myth is criminal. Let alone the cost to the design professionals who get sucked in and blow their fees trying to fight the tide of shoddy mediocrity.

We need to unite, design professionals, trades and owners and hold out against the dumb shits.

As Karl from Austria, where you need to be certified in your craft before you are allowed to touch histo presto, observes, "In Austria we have rules but no money. In America you have money but no rules."

][<en