Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have been endeavouring to shorten it up here as we've gone on already, and I'll try to keep my remarks to a couple of minutes.
The acquisition of real property services such as construction is done in a manner that's consistent with industry practices, legal precedent, trade agreements, legislation, and government policy. Our real property contracting personnel have significant experience in contracting for construction, architectural, and engineering services.
In the past five years we have put in place over 100 construction and consulting contracts with a value of over $195 million on behalf of the parliamentary precinct branch. Major contracts for the parliamentary precinct are awarded competitively with very few exceptions, such as the stone that was procured to match the original stone for the West Block.
The major construction projects on Parliament Hill are usually contracted through a two-stage competitive process, which is common in the construction industry for technically complex projects such as heritage renovation.
The first stage is one of pre-qualification and is open to the entire industry. It is publicly posted on the government's electronic tendering service called MERX. This stage ensures that the firms who are invited to submit a tender in the second stage have the required expertise and experience for this type of specialized work. In the second stage, the invitation to tender, the firms that pre-qualified in the first stage are invited to bid, which ensures that the contract is awarded to a qualified bidder. This invitation is also publicly posted on MERX. The entire contract process and undertaking is managed by public servants as well as reviewed and approved by senior-level public servants.
The procurement process in question, the West Block north towers restoration, followed this two-stage competitive process. In stage one, seven firms pre-qualified. The evaluation criteria included the need for bidders to present information on past projects to demonstrate that they had the expertise and experience needed to carry out the work on the West Block north towers. As an example, bidders had to have experience on projects that included both historic masonry restoration and copper roof replacement, and these projects had to be of a certain value. Five of the seven submissions, including the one from LM Sauvé, were assessed as having the required expertise and experience to carry out this type of specialized heritage renovation work. These five firms were then invited to tender for the work in stage two. Bids closed on April 3, 2008, were publicly opened, and the contract was awarded to LM Sauvé.
I should explain that four amendments were published during the solicitation stage. This is quite common and usually based on questions and comments received from the industry. However, the decision to amend a solicitation document is not taken lightly. The request is assessed against the criteria of reasonableness, openness, and competition. I'm quite certain I'll get an opportunity to more fully explain those in the question and answer period. As well, we consider whether it would withstand a legal challenge. When requests make sense and meet these criteria, we will usually accept them.
All of the due diligence steps were carried out in this two-stage process. For example, the technical merit of the submission was assessed; references for previous projects were checked; the compliance of the tender was verified; the tendered price was analyzed, confirmed, and then reconfirmed with the bidder; and the security clearances were conducted. At the time the contract was awarded, LM Sauvé was a company in good standing and was carrying out projects across Canada in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. In fact, LM Sauvé successfully completed some of the larger heritage masonry projects amongst the group of bidders and had the required expertise and experience.
I think I'll stop there, Mr. Chairman, just in respecting your time and to allow questions.