Objectives

To determine whether the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is monitoring and evaluating its contractors/consultants in compliance with its All-Agency Contractor Evaluation (ACE) system and taking appropriate action where performance ratings are less than satisfactory. We also determined whether procurement officials at the agencies reviewed and used the ACE ratings prior to making a contract award. The audit covered contracts from January 2016 to March 2020.

About the Program

In 1997, MTA implemented the ACE system, a performance evaluation system developed and operated by MTA Headquarters for use by its agencies to report on contractor and consultant performance and share the results with each other. MTA adopted the ACE Guidelines to help its agencies uniformly obtain and record reliable information on the performance of contractors and consultants working on capital-funded contracts equal to or greater than $250,000. Interim ACEs are due semi-annually throughout the contract and a final summary evaluation upon completion. Letters must be sent to the contractor informing them when the evaluation or any of its categories or components is less than satisfactory and requiring them to address the issues. ACEs must be reviewed when determining whether to award additional contracts where the same contractor is party to a new contract (either alone or in a joint venture). Issues with Unsatisfactory or repeated Marginal evaluations can hinder a contractor being determined responsible to take on new contract work.

Key Findings

MTA did not properly handle the review of responsibility for two of 10 sampled contractors with repeated less-than-satisfactory ACEs when awarding new contracts. MTA missed opportunities to advise project management teams about areas of known performance issues with contractors when they were awarded new contracts. Further, MTA did not ensure that ACEs were performed timely by evaluators who were responsible for the project, or, in certain cases, that the evaluations were done at all.

Key Recommendations

• Enforce and monitor procurement staff’s adherence to the agency procedures. Require the agency President’s approval of a responsibility determination in all cases where Adverse Information or Significant Adverse Information was noted.
• Require the agency ACE Administrator to contact the ACE evaluator when an evaluation is not filed within 45 days. Make an entry in the ACE database to indicate the evaluation is delinquent.
• Develop procedures to:

  • Include analysis of the category ratings over time to determine whether, in addition to the overall ratings, the categorical assessment reveals significant issues with the vendor’s performance.

  • Share performance issues found in the responsibility review with the next project manager.