San Francisco officials want to streamline the city’s notoriously byzantine contracting process to make it faster and more efficient and open the doors to more small businesses currently shut out of bidding for work.
Businesses that want city contracting work have to sign a 31-page list of terms and conditions, many of which are duplicative of state law, irrelevant or downright confusing. While large corporations can devote time and resources to the city’s process, small businesses often can’t…
But Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman wants to change that by updating the process for small businesses entering into contracts under $230,000 by standardizing or repealing a slew of esoteric rules in the city code.
Dubbed the Open For Business Contract Streamlining Act, Mandelman’s legislation is based on City Administrator recommendations from last year, which seek to end the “high level of administrative burden for both City staff and suppliers…
For Paul Pendergast, president of Build It, the largest industry association of LGBTQ and allied construction, architecture and engineering firms, the changes could entice more bidders who may have been turned off by the city’s onerous rules.
“Anything the city can do to get more businesses to bid on contracts we are in favor of,” he said… (more)