A Texas municipality considers waiving surety bonds for a construction project in order to increase the competition on the bid, and in turn, lower the bid amounts. [Read more…]
Defective water pipes in California
A federal jury in California found on Thursday that the nation’s largest maker of plastic pipe defrauded states and municipalities over a decade by knowing selling them defective pipe for use in their drinking water, firefighting, irrigation and other essential public systems. [Read more…]
SBA Triples Surety Bond Guarantee Ceiling
The Small Business Administration (SBA) has been offering surety bond guarantees for decades. For a very long time that limit has been set at $2,000,000 single. In the early part of 2013, Congress permanently raised the limit to $6,500,000 ($10,000,000 on federal projects) single. [Read more…]
Irvine Unified School District Broke Law (2011)
[Linked here] is a newspaper article on a court ruling against Irvine Unified School District last year (2011). All too often I tell my customers, “if they don’t want to give you the job, they won’t”. In practice this is typically how things work out. Thankfully the public contracting code provides otherwise. To do anything to the contrary is to invite favoritism, which quickly leads to abuse of the system. [Read more…]
Why Prequalifications Should Only Be Handled By the Surety Industry
Although prequalification of a potential bidder is but the first step in the surety underwriting process, it is an extremely important one and must be performed by a politically disinterested body. Politically appointed or politically oriented individuals or organizations could often find themselves under strong pressures in favor of certain contractors. For this reason the screening of potential bidders in the United States is almost always done by surety companies rather then by government bureaus or municipal agencies. [Read more…]
