Jul 3, 2024 By Mike Jones 5 min read

Washington County’s public safety committee and other officials are beginning to review the proposals from three vendors vying to overhaul the county’s 911 emergency radio contract.

The radio committee, public safety team, Mission Critical Partners consulting firm and all three commissioners gathered at the county offices Monday morning to start the process of “scoring” proposals to determine which one should be recommended for approval.

The county received proposals from three vendors last week submitted by MRA Inc. of North Strabane, BK Technologies Inc. of Melbourne, Fla., and Motorola Solutions Inc. of Chicago, which offered main and alternate proposals.

The radio project is complex and the county’s request for proposal was 170 pages long, with the responses from the vendors coming in large boxes that were between 800 and 900 pages. However, this is the second time in 18 months the committee has sat down to review proposals, which officials hope will expedite the process this time around.

“We did do this before, so this will make the process shorter because much of the process is familiar to all of the players involved,” county Director of Purchasing Randy Van Kirk said Tuesday.

The county requested proposals for the new system earlier this year after terminating a $22.545 million contract with MRA Inc. that was awarded in March 2023 under the previous leadership of then commissioner Diana Irey Vaughan. Both Irey Vaughan and Commissioner Larry Maggi approved the contract last year while Commissioner Nick Sherman voted against it after suggesting they select the option with Motorola instead.

Sherman, who took over as board chairman following Irey Vaughan’s retirement at the end of her term in January, pushed for a review of the MRA contract upon his ascension to the leadership position. He and new Commissioner Electra Janis voted in April to terminate it, while Maggi voted against that option since nearly $9 million had already been paid to MRA in the months after the contract was approved.

So the county is now back to the drawing board, so to speak, with the radio contract, although no details have been released about the current proposals. Unlike bids that must be opened and information immediately made public, requests for proposals from vendors may be reviewed and even negotiated before figures and specs are released according to state laws and county code. Once a contract is awarded, the proposals and other details can be released through open records requests.

“We really don’t want to show our cards until we have to when we’ve come up with an agreement,” Van Kirk said, adding they can negotiate with the vendors in order to get a better contract. “This is such an intricate proposal, there are so many elements to the project.”

Scott Neal, senior vice president of wireless and court technology for Mission Critical Partners, said the radio committee is made up of six members with emergency responder backgrounds. The group is trying to get the best product at the best price, which is different from awarding a contract to the lowest responsible bidder. Mission Critical, which is based in Port Matilda, Centre County, is merely a consultant tasked with helping explain the proposals and is not a part of the committee.

“They’re all aimed at giving vendors a level playing field to get their solution considered for purchase,” Neal said of the process. “But there are different flavors of this procurement with how they play out. These radio systems are very complex systems. … You’re not buying pencils, as you can imagine would be very different.”

The review committee is tasked with “scoring” the proposals on a scale of 100 points, with 60% of it going to the technical review, 20% for references from other projects by the vendors and 20% for cost. But the vendor also must get at least 45 points out of 60 in the technical review to be considered a viable option, Neal said. The results from the scoring will then allow the county to negotiate with one or more vendors to get the “best value” on the product before a contract is awarded.

“There’s so much complexity with these things there’s always room for tweaking back and forth,” Neal said.

The review sessions are private and the members even had to sign non-disclosure agreements before moving forward with the process. That apparently allows the scoring process and eventual negotiations to be done without the competing vendors knowing about the intricacies of the proposals.

The committee is scheduled to reconvene on July 11 to update the scoring process, and a recommendation could be made to the commissioners before their July 18 voting meeting. Van Kirk and Neal both said that while the commissioners apparently would prefer to award a contract this month, it could also happen in August if negotiations take more time.

The county is planning to use federal American Rescue Plan Act stimulus money to pay for the emergency radio system, which must be allocated by the end of this year and the project completed before the end of 2026.