Suboptimal Fuel Contracting and Supplier Selection

$15,000–$75,000 risk from: (1) State/FTA audit finding weak procurement controls; (2) potential claw-back of FTA discretionary funds; (3) reputational damage affecting future grant competitiveness; (4) forced remediation spending on procurement system implementation • $20,000–$80,000 per emergency event (not counted in baseline $25k–$250k annual loss; this is incremental). Frequency: 1–3 emergencies per year (weather, supply disruption). Annual incremental: $20k–$240k. • $25,000–$100,000 annually from: (1) unfavorable mid-contract amendments (price increases accepted without pushback); (2) missed opportunity to invoke force majeure or cap increases per original contract; (3) admin burden of informal amendment process (slow decision-making, delayed execution)

Budget Analyst manually cross-checks invoices against contract terms using PDF reader + spreadsheet; marks exceptions in Excel; no automated alert for price variance or invoice anomalies; supplier invoices sometimes arrive via email, sometimes via online portal (inconsistent) • Budget Analyst pulls email chains and meeting notes from Procurement asking 'why current supplier?' Answer: 'They've always been reliable' (no documentation of alternatives considered). Procurement Specialist tries to reconstruct supplier evaluation from memory + old emails; no formal scoring sheet or RFP record • Collects supplier bids via email, copies terms into Excel for comparison, and informally consults colleagues or past contracts stored on shared drives without centralized modeling of total cost of ownership or disruption risk.