West Hawaii Today reports that Maryl Construction has protested its apparent disqualification as low bidder on the Kaloko Housing Project in Kona. Apparently, Maryl's $3.9 million dollar bid failed to identify all of the subcontractors it intended to use on the Project. Maryl says the reason it did so is the Department of Public Works' bid invitation appeared to only request the name of some of the subcontractors to be used on the job, and not all. Therefore, the fact that Maryl did not list all of its subcontractors was a result of the contracting agency, and not the fault of Maryl. Maryl also noted that in the past, state agencies have sometimes requested the names of all subcontractors to be used on the job, but sometimes has requested the names of only some of the subcontractors to be used.
As a side note, Hawaii's procurement code and accompanying administrative rules mandate that all invitations to bid for construction contracts must require bidders to provide "the name of each person or firm to be engaged by the bidder as a joint contractor or subcontractor in the performance of the contract." Haw. Rev. Stat. 103D-302, Haw. Admin. Rules 3-122-21.
It would be interesting to see the instances in which the contracting agency published invitations to bid that required only the names of some but not all subcontractors, since the above statute and rule do not appear to allow agencies to impose selective subcontractor listing requirements.
