During negotiations for the most recent Wood Buffalo transit contract Tok Transit won the contract and Diversified Transportation lost out, but the VP for Diversified believes that the contract was compromised during the process and Mike Hannah is asking for a redo because certain documents are missing from the files according to a recent audit. The transit audit occurred on October 21 of this year, and the missing documents call into question the Request for Proposals (RFP) process integrity. Hannah explained “We feel like it’s compromised and we think that this should be re-tendered. It was clear to us that the appropriate due diligence was not done and we felt that we were were really discarded before we began the discussions.” Administrators for the municipality believe that the documents which are missing are minor and do not affect the integrity or the outcome.
Until the last Wood Buffalo transit contract Diversified Transportation was in charge of transit, but the last contract was awarded to Tok Transit instead. Wood Buffalo Municipality Internal Auditor Ralph Timleck provided a presentation which showed that the supply management branch of the municipality did not conform to the standard operating procedures because all relevant documentation was not maintained by the branch. According to the presentation by Timleck “The integrity of the selection process cannot be verified by an audit without the detailed report and scoring assessments.” According to Wayne Coombs, who acted as the municipal transit director for Diversified Transportation “For the municipality not being able to show the audit firm everything about it, that’s an atrocity to me. That’s unacceptable. People would be fired for that. You must have that document.”