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0 M M rather not bid government work because we are requiring so much; however, in this case, he believed they misunderstood some of the specifications also. Chairman Scurlock believed we authorized County Attorney Vitunac to review our procedures in terms of building and construction in our bidding process. Although generally the bid process works very well, he personally felt very strongly, in terms of constructing new facilities, that the concept of identi- fying and pre -qualifying a number of firms we feel comfortable with and have seen the type of work they have done would serve us well; we could do something similar to what we do in Utilities where we short listed a number and then worked from there to select an entity to do business with. The low bid process for building and construction has resulted in cost overruns as welt as litigation, and the Chairman felt that, at least on a trial basis, we should test doing our bidding differently with a cautious eye to the public dollar and see if it doesn't result in some savings. Commissioner Eggert wished to make sure we have looked at our insurance requirements. She"knew we ran into this problem in looking for an architect .for North County. Chairman Scurlock noted that all across the country because of insurance costs, only very large companies have the ability to get the insurance and comply with the large bonding requirements. For example, Dickerson was low bid for the St. Lucie landfill, but actually Dickerson subcontracted the entire project out. The firm they subcontracted to is the one that was the successful bidder in Indian River County, but that company could not bid the St. Lucie landfill on its own because of the very large cost involved with bonding the two projects. The Chairman continued to discuss the problems with bonding capability and the advan- tages of pre -qualifying companies. The Board generally agreed our bidding procedure should be looked into. 8 Bou 73 PAGE 254