Reprographics 101

Recent competition for reprographers to provide “Internet-based planroom services and printing services for construction documents for the Illinois Tollway Authority …..

From the “introductory” section of the RFP document:

The Illinois State Toll Highway Authority (“Tollway”) is requesting Offers (bids / proposals) from responsible Vendors to meet the State’s needs. Below is a brief description of our needs with detailed requirements in subsequent sections of this solicitation. If you are interested and able to meet these requirements, please submit an Offer.

Brief Description: The Tollway is seeking a Vendor to provide on-call printing services of construction contract documents, as well as a website with the capacity to host Web-Based Plan Room Services for advertising, distributing, and archiving contract and utility permit documents, in addition to timely issuance of addenda (within 24-hours) to the Tollway’s perspective bidders for projects included in the Tollway’s Congestion Relief Program (CRP) and its annual Non-CRP projects.

The Vendor is to host a web-site to advertise bids on the world-wide-web to encourage competitive bid solicitations from contractors within and beyond Illinois’ borders. Contractors will have the ability to view and order construction contract documents as advertised by the Tollway. Additional capabilities include issuing and confirming receipt of addenda as authorized by the Tollway, archiving construction contract documents, utilities and permits, distributing the Tollway’s Standards and Specifications, and providing on-call printing services. The web-site also provides transparency by allowing the contractors and Tollway personnel the ability to track plan holders for each contract.

To see the “Request for Proposals” document, clink on this link:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B81al4kFAU9JOGFmZWYxZWUtMTAxOC00MmQyLWJlOGEtMjJhYmNkZjE0NGYy&hl=en&authkey=CNuUwO0M

To see the “Bid Results” document, click on this link:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B81al4kFAU9JMTIwODhlYzktMDAzZi00ZTAxLTllZjktYjI3OGQwODFmYjVl&hl=en&authkey=COvH_IwE

Joel’s comments:

Apparently, only two reprographics companies submitted proposals.

Given the state of the economy in the reprographics industry, I was very surprised to find out that only two reprographics companies submitted proposals. Perhaps that was an issue driven by location? I was “kind of expecting to see” ARC and ABC Imaging (who both have Chicago area operations) involved in this competition. Maybe this competition required vendors to be “small” or “disadvantaged” or “minority-owned” or “women owned” businesses? I don’t think that was the case, and, frankly, I have no interest in reading through the entire RFP document. I did notice that “price” was only 37.5% of the total evaluation factor. That was very surprising.