Every time I hear someone talk about lowest price or needing to be low bid I think of this clip from the movie Armageddon: DIRECT LINK

If you can’t watch the clip at work or have some kind of vendetta against YouTube, here’s the scene:

Steve Buscemi looks over at Bruce Willis as they are getting strapped into the space shuttle and says

You know we’re sitting on four million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn’t it?

So does lowest initial price mean good quality when it comes to museum exhibit design and fabrication? Could it mean that you might be dealing with less experienced people using methods and materials that haven’t been tested in the field? Could it mean the potential for change orders throughout the design and fabrication process and higher overall cost due to lack of bid preparation and understanding? Do you risk that chance of having exhibits that fail within the first or second year? Could it be that the museum exhibits would be built with engineering methods and materials only to withstand one year’s worth of use only to get through the standard warranty period? Will the low-bidder challenge you to create the best exhibit during the design process? Will they tell an engaging story? Are they good planners with seasoned project managers? I encourage you to think about these questions when considering hiring for low-bid.

Someone once told me that if you get four bids and three of them are close in price but the fourth is substantially lower, then its a good bet the fourth either doesn’t know what they are bidding or they are desperate. Either way I don’t like my odds in choosing the fourth.

What are some of your low-bid stories? Have you experienced any of the things I mentioned above? How important is a company’s experience and warranty when considering them for your project?