Companies that do business with the D.C. government might soon find themselves literally toiling for a good grade. The D.C. Council is considering legislation that would establish a marking system for all firms contracting with the District, including the local, small and disadvantaged enterprises. The bill spells it out: Just like high school students at the end of a semester, every contractor would receive a grade from A to F once the work is done, based on an evaluation process to be developed by the mayor.
The better the grade, the more likely a company is to win other jobs, according to the legislation. And firms that do poor work would get weeded out, allowing the District to make better use of the $2 billion it spends annually on contracting and procurement.
“We have all type of contractors that continue to get work and they do shoddy work,” said at-large Council Member Kwame Brown, who co-introduced the measure. “You wonder why these contractors are doing shoddy work and still getting jobs.”
There must be a formal evaluation of work once a contract closes, Brown said. Today, he said, the assessment is a subjective one made by a staffer with the Office of Contracting and Procurement.
That agency is perhaps the most maligned of any in the city. A recent audit from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, for example, found that the office limits competition among local vendors, liberally uses sole-source contracting and allows numerous agencies to skirt procurement laws, “increasing the risk of preferential treatment for certain vendors and ultimately driving costs up.”
Briant Coleman, spokesman for OCP, said no contract is awarded without a “past performance evaluation.” And once a project is finished, Coleman said, a representative with the agency is supposed to evaluate the work.
“We do have a system in place,” Coleman said. “Whether or not it’s frequently used, it’s something we could probably use more.”
The local business community backs the premise of the bill as “the right direction,” as long as the criteria for evaluation are clearly articulated, said Janene Jackson, senior vice president with the D.C. Chamber of Commerce.
