Board members press Portland SD 1J staff on new 'pool' procurement process and cost oversight

Board members at the Portland School District 1J Facilities Improvement & Oversight Committee meeting on May 27 pressed district staff about a new owner-provided services “pool” procurement process intended to speed delivery of work across the bond program.

Paul Williams of the district’s purchasing and contracting office described the pool RFP as a way to front-load administrative work and avoid issuing dozens of separate solicitations. "It's size and scale being able to try to frontload the administrative burden on this in order that we can move the work faster when we need to actually have the work done," Williams said.

Several board members raised concerns about transparency and price competition once firms are admitted to the pool. Board member Virginia said she worried the pool could leave the board without visibility into multi‑million‑dollar contracts and asked whether the district could require a quick quoting process inside the pool. "Is there a way within the pool when we are assigning tasks to have it be a competitive process within the pool that's quick versus just assigning the work?" she asked.

Sarah Norman, who oversees bond program updates, replied that pricing was part of the RFP solicitation as time‑and‑materials/hourly rates for professional services, and that once a firm is assigned to a specific project the district writes a scope of work and asks the vendor for a percentage of construction cost, hourly rates and/or a lump‑sum proposal for that scope. "When a vendor is assigned through the matrix system...that vendor then has to provide us with either a percentage of cost of construction cost to complete that work along with their hourly rates and/or a lump‑sum proposal," Norman said.

Staff and board members also discussed legal limits on evaluating price in certain professional‑services solicitations. Paul Williams referenced Oregon procurement rules that, for some architecture and engineering services, historically require qualifications‑based selection and negotiate price after award; he said recent rule changes allow some limited treatment of price but that statutes and contracting rules constrain what evaluators can ask for during the solicitation.

The board did not vote on any policy change. Members asked staff to follow up with additional documentation on which pools included submitted hourly rates and how the district’s matrix assigns vendors to projects. Norman agreed to provide that follow‑up information to the board.

What happens next: staff will return follow‑up materials about which pools included hourly rates, the district’s matrix for assigning vendors and how the district compares proposed charges against market rates. No formal procurement policy was adopted during the meeting.