Gastown Public Spaces Plan

Perfect, please go ahead.

Thank you, Councillor.

Thank you, Councillor, for your question. Alexander Ralph, Chief Procurement Officer. So, obviously, we have been having significant cost pressures, and we've been seeing over the last couple of years that the bids are coming up with additional cost and prices are increasing significantly. The city has a strategy of trying to fix our contracts and the fixed price contracts to be able to make sure that we have certainty in terms of price just for at least for the initial term of those contracts. Typically the contracts have an average of four year initial term and then with options to extend. So that's how the city is able to mitigate some of these cost escalations. But sometimes vendors are not able to supply just at the contracted price. So we would have to work with them to be able to try to get into an agreement in the case that we would accept any price increases. An example of that would be last year with some of the retaliatory tariffs that the Canadian government established. We needed to make sure that if we wanted the supply, that we work with our vendor partners to be able to make sure that we were able to get those goods and services.

Yes, thank you for your question. And we do, as part of the supply chain management work, we do inventory planning. So depending on, as well, just how much do we forecast that we were going to be needing, and as well, taking a look at some of those price trends, we make decisions in terms of determining the levels of inventory, especially for critical items that we know that we will require. Sometimes there are space constraints, for example, in our warehouses. So we work with our vendor partners as well to see if they have some space to be able to as well just keep inventory for the City of Vancouver.

Yeah, and I think obviously the whole world is taking a look at what's happening geopolitically and with just many things in terms of escalation of costs. So we are being cautious and we're not trying to be reactive. We're trying to observe and depending on... the things that we know that we need to spend on, then have a better strategy in terms of being resilient and being able to work in conjunction with our partners to be able to make sure that we meet the needs of goods and services for the City of Vancouver.

Thank you, Counselor.

Yeah, thank you, Chair, for the question. Yes, the savings that we are showing on the report, as you well mentioned, are based on what we originally budgeted for. By doing a public competitive process, we just save in several ways. One, making sure that we consolidate the complete volume of the city needs so that we actually work together with the vendors and just and there's a larger just make it more attractive for them to be able to just improve their prices during their bids. As well, having that competitive tension during a competitive bid process helps to be able to reduce some of those costs as well. So although the metric in terms of savings that we're showing, it's based on what we originally estimated in terms of budget. We as well are able to produce some metrics in terms of how much we have been able to negotiate based on that bid price that they set up originally as part of the RFPs, or as well in the case of ITTs, we do have a comparison in terms of the gap between each one of the different bid proposals, and we're able to see if there's a large spread. or if there's not so just there's other saving metrics that are not reported here but are available if um just if council wants to take a look at some of those okay so with compared to other metrics we do have some saving there as well And it is correct, yes.

Yes, so the city obviously comes out just to an RFP with a specific scope of work, and we try to stick to that scope of work. In the case of, for example, construction projects, it's typical that until you actually... OPEN UP THE GROUND OR REALLY UNDERSTAND THE CONDITIONS OF THE SITE, THERE MIGHT BE ADDITIONAL THINGS THAT ARE REQUIRED AND IT'S TYPICAL THAT FOR EXAMPLE FOR CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS THERE ARE CHANGE ORDER. SO JUST WE CONSIDER AS PART OF OUR BUDGET SOME CONTINGENCY TO BE ABLE TO MAKE SURE THAT WE MITIGATE SOME OF THAT. just potential change orders and as well but we have a similar process in terms of approval we consider change orders as awarding an additional contract and if for example for large change orders they will go either to bid committee or bring them to council if they're more than three million dollars to be able to get that approval so that way we make sure that there's transparency in terms of those change orders but as well that there's some control and mitigation to avoid escalation of those change orders.

We currently do not track that, but we're able to produce some metrics.