ring-ring... ring-ring... “hello, City of Anytown, how can I help you?”
“I have some questions regarding he skatepark bid, who might I speak with?”
“That would be Jeremiah, please hold”

“Hello, this is Jeremiah”
“Hi Jeremiah, I was reading the bid and was curious why you would be building a temporary steel park rather than a permanent, professionally-built concrete one?”
“Simple- warranty and cost. Concrete isn’t warranted and it costs three times as much as steel”.

Awkward silence...

“Well, then can you tell me why the bid spec for the ramps is written by the vendor and eliminates anyone else form bidding?"

"Because”, Jeremiah offered, “it’s just the industry standard...”

More awkward silence...

In the 30 minutes that followed Jeremiah grew more and more angry at the fact that this company, whom they had chosen to lead the skatepark design process with their community, had actually abused that trust and used it as an opportunity to create a no-bid sale of their product- despite the fact that the project is funded entirely by tax-generated funds- your and my hard-earned tax dollars.

The process has become more and more common in our industry with one company working tirelessly to create a list of requirements- from insurance limits to warranties to the use of copyrighted names to put themselves at the top of some self-invented heap in a game of marketing at the expense of quality. So the question begs- does a copyrighted name that only one vendor has the right to use make a better product? How about upping the length of your warranty to more than twice the length of time your company has ben in business and 5 times that of a Mercedes? In my opinion, none of this makes shit for a difference when the time comes to skating... and we are building a skatepark, right?

Proprietary Specs and the abuse of trust

There are many ways to gain the trust of a client- reputation, history of quality and timeliness, length of time in business, etc. There may even be religious values that draw you to a particular company over another or, gasp, their brochure just looked real good and had LOTS of completed projects and quotes... but why anyone trusts a particular salesman and chooses a particular product isn’t the real issue, we are discussing what someone does with that trust.

Skateparks are strange, abstract little beasts and to the non-skater, which the vast majority of city officials responsible for buying one are, it can be a very scary endeavor. That said, once a the aforementioned official develops a level of trust with the salesman things can move along pretty quickly. And now we arrive at the problem- when the salesman abuses that trust and pigeon-holes their product in to the process.

Development of product and competition, it has been said, is the cornerstone of creativity. But what about the development of specifications and procedures which don’t create a better product but simply serve to create a monopoly. And what happens when that monopoly is presented in such a way that those who don’t offer the same product are somehow inferior? Seriously? Because every restaurant in America isn’t willing to cook up sawdust burgers the one who does is the automatic winner? “Well, our sawdust burger is the best in the world and we’re the only ones doing it!” Do you see a problem here, Clem? Your burger isn’t the best... as a matter of fact it isn’t even any good at all but with enough marketing dollars and a little help from above even a sawdust burger can burst on to the scene and lead the industry for a while.

Of course all good (or bad) things must come to an end and so it will go for Clem’s sawdust burger- but I’m sure by then Clem will have bought another restaurant and try and find a way to create something else that no one really wants, like sawdust dog food or sawdust pillows...