Reducing Budget and Timeline Overruns of Street Reconstruction Contracts in Saint Paul, Minnesota

As part of Bloomberg Philanthropies’ What Works Cities initiative, the GPL provided pro bono technical assistance to help Saint Paul expand the pool of vendors that bid on street reconstruction contracts and improve vendor management during construction.

To improve competition and the management of street reconstruction projects, Saint Paul and the GPL:

1. Conducted a vendor survey to understand why vendors were not bidding on Saint Paul procurements.
2. Instituted a pre-bid meeting for every procurement.
3. Assigned a single staff person project management responsibility for the entire project from design to construction completion.
4. Created a dashboard to track projects during the construction phase.
5. Got some help from the press.

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