Parking firms challenge airport's bidding outcome

The new contract is worth up to $23.5 million for operating expenses in the first year, with management fees of up to nearly $900,000 over a three-year period.

Competing for the work were Parking Company of America, Standard Parking Corp., Ampco System Parking, Five Star Parking and Central Parking. In the end, the airport deemed Standard Parking the winner and is seeking the City Council's approval of a three-year contract with an option for a two-year renewal.

But the first evaluation process came up with a different result. In that process, the evaluation committee used a checklist to determine what requirements each proposal met, then calculated a total score that was used to choose the winner. It did not include a qualitative evaluation of the responses as the second evaluation process did, city officials said.

In the first round, "they crafted an evaluation methodology that was really outside of the methodology" they had been trained on, airport attorney Michael Fineman said.

A. Girard Geeter, who oversaw the first evaluation process as deputy chief procurement officer for Atlanta's aviation division at Hartsfield-Jackson, said the group determined that there was an issue and took it to the law department for its review. The city's law department said the committee cannot evaluate proposals based on criteria not spelled out in the request for proposals and said the committee must resolicit proposals.

When asked why he did not stop the process earlier, Geeter said, "The only way I can answer that is you live and learn."

The second evaluation process gave scores to each proposal based on the quality of responses as determined by the committee, but it did not include oral presentations.

Two firms filed three protests, but the protests were denied for being late and for failure to provide a bond. "From a legal perspective the case is over," said Ben DeCosta, the airport's manager.

But Steve McCormick, vice president of the airport division for Central Parking, told the City Council committee that he still has concerns because Central Parking was in a virtual tie for the highest score in the first round, with Standard in third place, and then Central Parking scored last in the second round.

"I challenge that process," McCormick said. He also said he believes the collaborative scoring method used in the second round could allow a "dominant person" to influence others, while individual scoring that is then pulled together into a total is "more fair and open in my opinion."

"We just do not feel that the process and the selection has been conducted to the benefit to the airport or the city," McCormick said.