Wednesday, December 14, 2011

RPRP Consultant Team Selected!

In November 2011, after advertising the Rutger Park Restoration Project RFP nationally, reviewing the twelve submitted proposals and conducting in-person interviews with the six shortlisted teams, the Rutger Park Restoration Project Committee initially recommended the firm of John G. Waite to the Landmarks Board, which voted to confirm this recommendation.

However, following further consultation with our funding partners and a review of the terms of the EPF grant, we all came to the same regrettable conclusion that Landmarks simply does not have the available funding at this time to engage the Waite team for this phase of the project at the proposed levels. In order to verify this conclusion and choose an alternate team, the RPRP went back to the top six groups with a specific list of fee questions, and asked for more in-depth responses so that we could make an “apples-to-apples” comparison of all six finalists.

Based on the results of the fee proposal responses, and after nearly six months of debate, deliberation and reference checking, the RPRP voted to remove their previous recommendation of John G. Waite, and to replace it with a final recommendation to engage the Syracuse-based firm of Crawford & Stearns. The recommendation was passed to the full Board of Trustees on December 12, 2011, who voted unanimously to confirm it.

As a result, Landmarks is pleased to announce that the Syracuse-based firm of Crawford & Stearns will be leading the effort to produce two Historic Structure Reports and one Cultural Landscape report for the estate grounds at 1, 2 and 3 Rutger Park. Congratulations!

This decision was made based on the available project funding, in-person team interviews, similar completed projects and references, and the published criteria in the original RFP, including: Conformance with the terms of the RFP; Quality, completeness, and clarity of proposal and methodology; Demonstrated competence and technical expertise in the project area; Organization, management, and technical approach to the project; Demonstrated staffing capacity, expertise and availability of key personnel; Experience in performance of comparable engagements; and Reasonableness of cost.

We would like to thank all six groups again for their participation and very thoughtful submissions. It has been a real pleasure to get to know the fine teams that you all assembled. We will keep your proposals on file for five years along with your interview presentations, and have added your teams to our very short “Prequalified & Preferred Vendor” list. Some future work may be awarded exclusively from this list (funding and restriction dependent). Of course, your firms will all be invited and encouraged to tender responses to any and all future opportunities. We sincerely look forward to working with you in the future, and wish you the very best.