The featured speaker at the breakfast forum acknowledged thecity's role in widening the gap between New York and other markets."We're a bad client," said Robert Lieber, deputy mayor for economicdevelopment. "We think that competition is the key to keeping costsunder control, and we recognize that we have not presented aparticularly competitive environment."

As a result, Lieber said, "we don't get a very robust response"on RFPs, and city construction projects often come in over budgetand behind schedule. Improving the level of competition on cityprojects is key, he said, citing a projection that for every bidreceived, the final costs of a project can be reduced by 2% to3%.

Lieber expressed the hope that the Bloomberg administration'sefforts to address inefficiency and lack of competition for bidswill create a "spillover" effect into how the private sector doesbusiness. He discussed five reforms in the process for city capitalconstruction projects, as revealed on Monday by Mayor MichaelBloomberg. One is a program to develop accurate project scopes andcost estimates before budgets for the projects are approved.Another is a three-year pilot program that will eliminate the "nodamages for delays" clause from 25% of city construction projects,thus allowing contractors on those projects to collect damages fordelays caused by the city.