City stays with the familiar and local for external auditing services

Prince Rupert CFO 
Corinne Bomben

While they had five bids to review as part of their Request for Proposals, at the end of their process, the City's Financial Officer brought forward the recommendation for City Council to award the city's auditing contract for its annual external audit to the local Prince Rupert accounting firm Carlyle Sheppard and Company.

At Monday's Council session, CFO Corinne Bomben outlined how the city's review of the five bids received came to its recommendation, noting that familiarity with the city's procedures and systems played part of the overall consideration, despite lower bids from two Prince George competitors.

"A request for proposals was placed on BC Bid at the end of June for services covering fiscal year ends covering 2020 through 2022. Of the five compliant proposals the evaluation team is recommending Carlyle, Sheppard and Company. The firm is the only local firm to submit a proposal and while two other proposals were slightly less in price, the difference was not enough to recommend moving the service to a non local firm" 

In a reply to a question from Councillor Adey, Ms. Bomben observed that despite lower bids, potential travel costs by the two Prince George based applicants was one factor that they considered, as well as their familiarity with the City's financial systems having been the city's auditor for a number of years.

Councillor Mirau used the opportunity to inquire if there was a standardized procedure in place when it comes to recommendations for bid requests.

Towards that question Ms. Bomben noted that this was the first time in her memory that the city made use of a contract bid process for auditor services. 

Mr. Mirau followed up with comments to suggest that Council should be looking to standardizing the process moving forward.

Councillor Randhawa offered up some observations related to the proposed bid process and how the City approaches its request for submissions.

Ms. Bomben also noted that the contract comes with the option of a two year extension if desired by the City.

More background as to how the City staff reached their decision can be reviewed from the Report to Council from Monday's session.

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You can review the full discussion from the City's Video Archive starting at the four minute mark.

More notes related to Monday's City Council Session can be explored here.

A look at past Bids for Tender from the City can be reviewed from our archive page here.

A wider overview of past Council Discussion themes is available on our Council Discussion archive page.

Cross posted from the North Coast Review.