When Kelly Tshibaka’s Department of Administration scheduled a rushed competitive process to spend millions in federal COVID-19 money outsourcing some personnel management tasks, the state set aside one working day to review the proposals, guaranteeing a cursory examination.

The only connection to the pandemic is that the project is called “Pandemic Preparedness Plan Phase 2—Personnel Management,” but that is a ruse to justify the use of COVID-19 money on a makeover that Tshibaka already had in the works.

An Alaska state employees union filed an unfair labor practice complaint over the contract last week.

It appears that the state decided in advance that the contract would go to Tandem Motion and went through a pro forma procurement exercise with the outcome never in doubt.

The company will get $4.5 million for six months of work. If the federal government allows COVID-19 money to be spent after 2020, the state says, the contract could be extended until the end of 2022 for about $12 million more.

In the request for proposals issued July 24, the department said the minimum requirement to compete for the work was four years experience and completion of at least one similar project.

On both accounts, Tandem Motion should have been declared ineligible to get the contract, had the three evaluators from Tshibaka’s department actually done an evaluation and paid attention to the details.

On page 4 of the RFP, the state said the contractor had to have “Four years of experience in workforce management, performance management, or organizational design and development activities.” The state also said that at a minimum, the contractor must have completed “at least one project, similar in size, scope and complexity preformed for a local, state, or federal government entity.”

Tandem Motion LLC was incorporated in Washington on May 17, 2019. It does not have four years experience. It does not meet the minimum requirements in the RFP.

On question No 11, of “certifications,” Tandem Motion answered that it can provide, if requested, “financial records for the organization for the past three years.” The company cannot make that certification and should have said, “False.”

“Failure to answer or answering ‘False’ may be grounds for disqualification. For any ‘False’ responses, provide clarification (up to 250 word maximum for each “False” clarification) below (add rows as necessary),” the state instructs on the form.

No one who evaluated the Tandem Motion offer made mention of the company’s formation in 2019 or the false claim about financial records.

In addition to not having four years experience, Tandem Motion has not completed a project similar in size, scope and complexity to the $4.5 million plan.

The project that the company claims as “similar” was a 10-week effort last year for the Department of Administration and the Department of Environmental Conservation,

“Tandem Motion successfully led a 10-week performance management project October–December 2019 to produce values, department-, division-, and functional-level objectives and KPIs, individual performance metrics, and individual SMART goals tied directly to organizational objectives for over 1,700 State of Alaska (SOA) employees across the Department of Administration (DOA) and Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC),” the company said on its submission.

But this statement is contradicted by a claim from Tshibaka, who insisted last November that Tandem Motion did not have a contract with the state and that it was not leading the project.

When I wrote last fall about how a newly minted company received a state contract, Tshibaka claimed that I was wrong. She said that Tandem Motion was a subcontractor to Collins Alliance. I had written that Tandem Motion had a contract because that is what co-owner Cara Griffith told DEC employees.

“The contract for assistance piloting the common, annual performance eval system is with Collins Alliance, not Tandem Motion. Tandem Motion is one of Collins Alliance’s subcontractors. Collins Alliance is a 16-year old company, not a 6-month old company. The contract is for $129,500 for development of performance reviews,” Tshibaka said last November. “The State of Alaska does not have a contract with Tandem Motion.”

“Cara Griffith, formerly with Accenture, is volunteering her time to assist with the implementation of the pilot project at DEC because she is committed to the success of State of Alaska employees. I'm grateful for her service to Alaskans,” Tshibaka said.

On its website, Collins Alliance says the state project on HR transformation is its work.

At a minimum, the three state employees who evaluated the Tandem Motion contract in one day should have spent a few minutes trying to determine whether the contract or subcontract that Tandem Motion had last year qualifies as similar in size, scope and complexity, given that it was not led by Tandem Motion. The state review also failed to examine whether it is legal to claim “volunteer” work at DEC justifies a multi-million-dollar contract now.

The three evaluators from Tshibaka’s department were—Kate Sheehan, director of personnel and labor relations; Paula Vrana, deputy administration commissioner; and Raquel Solomon-Gross, coordinator of the “Program Acceleration Office.”

They exaggerated the amount of Alaska experience Tandem Motion has and overlooked the company’s failure to meet the four-year minimum benchmark.

Sheehan and Solomon-Gross are both members of the HR transformation committee, along with Joey Collins, the owner of Collins Alliance, who subcontracted with Tandem Motion last year. Two other members of that committee, Amanda Holland, deputy administration commissioner, and Pam Day, deputy director of the personnel and labor relations, wrote endorsement letters that Tandem Motion included in its proposal, along with one from Tshibaka.

On her evaluation of Tandem Motion, Sheehan wrote, “I think their Ak experience is reflected in their proposal. They understand the state and how it works” and “As stated above, they understand the state which I believe will be an asset due to the tight timelines.”

It’s not clear if any of the nearly 50 people named by Tandem Motion as workers on the project have any Alaska experience other than Cara Griffith. Sheehan is assuming “they understand the state and how it works.”

The state only allowed only 10 days to respond to the RFP, claiming it had to do that because the money has to be spent by the end of the year. The short timeline worked to the benefit of Tandem Motion and is consistent with the effort by state employees to steer the contract to the company.

On her evaluation of Guidehouse, the only other bidder deemed responsive, Sheehan said, “They have experience w/government, but no Alaska experience” and “I don’t know that they understand our workforce.” She gave Tandem Motion a score of 30 and Guidehouse a score of 25, out of a possible 40.

On Vrana’s evaluations, she made no comments, giving Tandem Motion a 30 and Guidehouse a 25.

On Solomon-Gross’s evaluation of Tandem Motion, she first wrote, “Extensive successful SOA (State of Alaska) experience” and gave the company the highest mark in terms of minimum experience. But that line was erased and the score was lowered. In the end, she made no comment on experience. Elsewhere, she praised the company for its plan to meet the state timeline and “well laid out risks & strategy” and said the “team has extensive experience” in personnel.

She gave Tandem Motion a score of 35 and Guidehouse a score of 25.

The sparse or nonexistent notes offered by the evaluators suggest that they spent no time looking into the defects in the Tandem Motion proposal.

And they did not look into the background of some of the key Tandem Motion leaders who are to collect hundreds of thousands, working for six months. Two of the highest earners completed master’s degrees this year, but one was working as a barista in Washington in 2018 and another was working as a “boat mate” in Florida for the first seven months of 2018. They stand to earn hundreds of thousands.

If they lived in Alaska, they would be among the highest paid people in the state.

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