Contracts going abroad

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I was stunned to hear the contract for census forms had gone to england.

A guy on liveline last week said that most if not all european countries keep 99% of all printing in the country.....
Ireland of course sends 22% abroad, mostly to the north. And the joke in all this is the dept of the enviroment said no irish company could print the forms and log all the stats into a database..... wtf, the company that won the tender then sub contracted both the print and data logging back to 2 irish companies.

More and more state/semi-state tenders are being won by companies outside Ireland, other states get around this by breaking up the full contract of say 250,000 euro which must be put into a european journal into smaller contracts. Lets say clothing, this is broken into footwear @ 50k, gloves@ 50k etc. At what point are we going to wake up.

My last point was mentioned to me by a guy who lost out on a 1.5 million contract to a company abroad, the semi-state body save 100k on this contract, but not one cent will ever be seen in the country, If as this guy says he's company won the tender,on the face of it they were 100k more expensive but 21% of the total contract would go to the state in VAT, another 50k in profit tax, without the jobs benifits etc.

Gumbo

heard about this last week!
a bit like Mary Harney last year telling irish people to buy irish, then the Government awards out of state contracts then too

there are some PS dept. still contracting work, my own is one, but it is strictly to a dublin based company and has been cut back by approx 80%.

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kceire wrote: »

heard about this last week!
a bit like Mary Harney last year telling irish people to buy irish, then the Government awards out of state contracts then too

there are some PS dept. still contracting work, my own is one, but it is strictly to a dublin based company and has been cut back by approx 80%.

Yeah but the problem is these clowns in procurment who are terrified to upset europe.

Gumbo

not yet wrote: »

Yeah but the problem is these clowns in procurment who are terrified to upset europe.

it annoys the private sector too!
in early 2009 when i was in my previous job (Consulting Engineers), we had to advertise on a european level for a Hospital refurb job and we had many many tender requests from east european companie who had no Dublin HQ, no Dublin staff etc etc they had planned to bring everything to Dublin to complete the job, then go back home afterwards! they wer'nt even in the top5 price wise, it was annoying but it has o be done!

i think in "these times", governments should be able to lead the pack and say "No", we want a fair price from a local company etc

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kceire wrote: »

it annoys the private sector too!
in early 2009 when i was in my previous job (Consulting Engineers), we had to advertise on a european level for a Hospital refurb job and we had many many tender requests from east european companie who had no Dublin HQ, no Dublin staff etc etc they had planned to bring everything to Dublin to complete the job, then go back home afterwards! they wer'nt even in the top5 price wise, it was annoying but it has o be done!

i think in "these times", governments should be able to lead the pack and say "No", we want a fair price from a local company etc

I agree 100% but european tendering law states any work over 250k has to be put out to tender all over europe.....
I belive the scots just tell them to fcuk off and keep it local. Our procurment dept's need to be clever and split these tenders up, or put in such conditions as to make it impossilbe to get the tender.......This is what Italy,Spain,France and germany do.

Pete_Cavan

not yet wrote: »

I agree 100% but european tendering law states any work over 250k has to be put out to tender all over europe.....
I belive the scots just tell them to fcuk off and keep it local. Our procurment dept's need to be clever and split these tenders up, or put in such conditions as to make it impossilbe to get the tender.......This is what Italy,Spain,France and germany do.

Foreign companies being able to bid for these contracts is not an issue, I would imagine we are one of the largest beneficiary of these rules due to the amount of work Irish construction companies have abroad. The problem is the cost of doing business in this country is too high. The government would be better off looking at ways to reduce the cost of living, wages, rents, rates, energy, etc. in this country to make us more competitive rather than splitting every tender so that it is worth less that €250k.

dan_d

It's very very very simple.

We are part of the EU.

That's all folks.

As somebody previously said, all tenders above 250k have to be put out to tender Europe-wide at least. Now before everyone starts whinging about this, please stop for a second and think. This is a 2 way street. We put tenders out, other countries win them. They put tenders out, we win them.The only way some Irish firms are actually still in business at this point in time is BECAUSE they can win tenders in other countries. If we pull out of this, it means we cut ourselves off from other markets. Maybe not on paper, but in reality, that is what will happen.

And don't kid yourself that we obey the rules and do it like this all the time. There's a number of practices that have got around this, particularly in the PS, such as splitting a contract into 2 smaller ones, at values that are slightly less than 250k, so that a company they want can tender for it and have a chance.

There's no point saying "the Gov should do this" and "the Gov should do that". They can't. It's like the SW being paid to the Eastern European thing. They are in Europe, so are we, that's how the laws work. And there's not much point in complaining about it either because it's quid pro quo. Off the top of my head I could name a number of engineering firms (in particular) that are benefitting from this. And several that are only managing to keep their doors open because of this. We're either in or we're not, we can't have it both ways.

lmimmfn

not yet wrote: »

I agree 100% but european tendering law states any work over 250k has to be put out to tender all over europe.....
I belive the scots just tell them to fcuk off and keep it local. Our procurment dept's need to be clever and split these tenders up, or put in such conditions as to make it impossilbe to get the tender.......This is what Italy,Spain,France and germany do.

surely we could have split it up per county then to make sure it wouldnt hit 250k? i think its an absolute disgrace that 1. Government money goes abroad for jobs we should be doing ourselves. and 2. That the idiots here tendering for it priced too high.

Gumbo

lmimmfn wrote: »

surely we could have split it up per county then to make sure it wouldnt hit 250k? i think its an absolute disgrace that 1. Government money goes abroad for jobs we should be doing ourselves. and 2. That the idiots here tendering for it priced too high.

its not always the lowest tender that gets it, you have to look at the companies history and their size and probability that they will go bust during the project. also such things as hourly rates so that when extras appear (and they always appear :mad:), your keeping the costs down.

sometimes one company will be 10% lower than the other but their out of hour costs and hourly rates for extras are immense.

this can be limited though as all EU contracts for tenders etc have to be complete drawings and construction details shown, so whats in the tender package is what gets built, ant deviation from the drawings and the contractor can (and will always get) claim for extras and apply his costs on top of the agreed tender price, even if you change items such as light fittings etc

jimmycrackcorm

The question people should be asking is why can't an Irish company compete to get this business? Perhaps it boils to economies of scale - after all census enumeration is a once in a while business so it would be difficult to gear up for that but the IDA should be looking at the areas were contracts are going abroad to see if it possible to help businesses here compete for these, both here and abroad.

dan_d

lmimmfn wrote: »

surely we could have split it up per county then to make sure it wouldnt hit 250k? i think its an absolute disgrace that 1. Government money goes abroad for jobs we should be doing ourselves. and 2. That the idiots here tendering for it priced too high.

1. Their Governments often pay Irish companies who win tenders in other countries for jobs they could be doing themselves.
Have you looked at the amount of construction being done in the UK by Irish firms? And not just the UK - Poland, Hungary, Romania, Turkey, Malta (and further afield, such as the UAE, but that's not relevant here). As I said before, these are keeping many Irish firms open - and in a waterfall effect, their suppliers and contractors too.

2. Price is not always the deciding factor. In fact, it's not often the deciding factor, unless you're dealing with a very,very tight bunch of people.

Like I said before - it's a 2 way street.We benefit enormously from this, so this argument is a bit pointless.