AV Transparency Project
Why Vendors Shouldn't Write the Rules

The Conflict of Interest: Why Vendors Shouldn't Write the Rules

Allowing a vendor to write the specifications for a project creates a direct, fundamental conflict of interest. A vendor's commercial objective—maximizing revenue and locking in the deal—directly overrides the community's objective of securing the best performance, value, and quality.

When a bidding vendor is allowed to author the specifications, they gain unfair structural advantages that compromise the entire procurement process:

1. "Tailored" Specifications and Proprietary Lock-In Vendors naturally write specifications that highlight their own proprietary technology or specific feature sets. By making these specific capabilities mandatory, they eliminate standard alternatives and effectively lock out qualified competitors before the bidding even begins.

2. Over-Specification and Inflated Project Scope Vendors have a direct financial incentive to make the scope of work as large and complex as possible. They define requirements that call for premium-tier products and excessive customization, forcing the buyer to pay for high-margin add-ons that provide little to no actual value to the community.

3. The Change-Order Trap (Hidden Costs) When the vendor defines the requirements, they know exactly where their high-margin items lie and where future costs can be hidden. They can structure the specifications to win the contract upfront, while building in intentional gaps to issue costly, highly profitable change orders down the road.

4. Compromised Technical Objectivity An independent consultant evaluates tradeoffs objectively (e.g., weighing upfront costs against long-term durability). A bidding vendor cannot. They will draft requirements that minimize their own weaknesses and design the technical solution around their preferred, most profitable architecture—rather than what is most reliable for the client.

How This Should Have Been Handled

Standard corporate and municipal procurement rules exist to prevent this exact scenario. To protect the community's finances, the project should have:

• Separated Advisory from Execution: Retained an independent, third-party consultant—who is contractually barred from bidding on the project—to draft the technical specifications.

• Used Performance-Based Specifications: Defined requirements in terms of desired outcomes and functional criteria (what the system must do) rather than prescribing proprietary inputs (exactly which expensive enterprise brands must be bought).