Bid or Quote???

[SMNFirefighter]

We roughly have $130,000 to spend between 25 sets of PPE and 20 SCBA's. Just wondering for the grant writers out there if we have to put it out to bid or receive quotes for the equipment?

[ameryfd]

You'll want to follow your standard operating procedures that you use when buying anything. Normally, I think, you'll at least want a couple of quotes to put in your folder. Another good thing would be to advertise for bids in your local newspaper. Whatever you normally do per your SOP is what FEMA expects. Remember, you don't have to take the lowest bid....

[BC79er_OLDDELETE]

DHS requires you solicit for at least two "bids", your state or local governing body may differ. Some require 3.

You don't have to do an official bid request in most cases. Trucks normally do because of their single item cost. Other things usually don't have to have the ads in the paper and all of that good stuff because it costs more money. You can call/fax/email various vendors of what you are looking for. Just keep track of who and when. If they don't send in a quote, then call them and if they aren't going to send one in, get a piece of paper that says they are declining. You don't have to receive 2-3 bids, just ask for them. If they don't want to send one in they don't have to, and you don't have to go searching for another outlet just to get a bid from.

Amery is right as usual, you don't have to take low bid either. If you have a specific brand name in use now, and this order will supplement that, then you can buy more of what you have now for continuity.

[crowe427]

If your dept has a policy for purchases go by it, one of my depts diddnt really have any guidelines for this so I set some up front and went with those. All I did was made a list of items we were going to purchase, I sent this to several vendors. I told the vendors that if they were interesed in bidding/quoting on items I would send them the details on that item or items. This simplified things a little, ppe people werent digging through air pak info. This made things easier for me plus this shows everyone that nobody is getting any special preference. Also I mentioned any restrictions upfront.