The Normal Town Council approved a $3.94 million resolution to award the Main St. (U.S. 51) Water Main Replacement Project along with a $1.4 million budget adjustment to cover the difference between the amount budgeted for the project and the low bid at its meeting on Monday night.
Council Member Stan Nord was not in attendance at the meeting. Without him there no one seriously questioned the $1.4 million budget adjustment.
Council member Karyn Smith asked a question or two. Mayor Chris Koos asked her to take one of the questions off line and discuss it with staff after the meeting, which she did. Smith voted along with her colleagues for the adjustment.
Cities 92.9 asked City Manager Pam Reece after the meeting when she became aware of the cost overrun. She said she was not aware of it until after bids came in. Bids were opened on August 30th.
Normal Staff Recommends $3.94 million for Main St. Water Main
In early spring, during the design process, the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) advised Normal that IDOT would require five feet of cover. This added cost because the budget estimate was based on the town’s normal practice of using four feet of cover.
Normal Water Department Director, John Burkhart, told us on Tuesday he couldn’t account for how much this increased the cost but, “An estimate could be developed, …”
One might think it would have been prudent to have prepared that estimate during the design process to see what the cost impact on the project would be to determine if design should continue or not.
Normal was also notified during the design process in the early spring by IDOT that it required the concrete sub-base be doweled and pinned to the existing sub-base. Again no estimate regarding the cost impact was made
During the early spring, again during the design process, town staff decided to add 1100 feet of water line to the project increasing the cost. That section runs along Kingsley St. and Dry Grove St. For the third time, no cost impact to the project was determined.
The Town decided to require the job be completed in 4 sections to minimize traffic impacts late in the spring, again still during the design process. And once again no cost impact to the project was determined.
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Burkhart appears to have placed his faith in a cost per foot estimate that was made during the budget planning process that he felt was sufficiently inflated telling us, “Even with the changes noted, we felt we had a good budget number going into bid opening. Over the past several years, water main replacement projects have averaged approximately $250/ft. We had budgeted for roughly $665/ft.”
Burkhart also said, “I advised the City Manager after the bids were opened that it was over budget.” Crawford Murphy and Tilley (CMT) the consultant on the project that did the design work, “developed their opinion of probable construction costs after the project was advertised and before bids were opened. I believe their estimate was $2,668,935, so our budget of $2.54M was in the ball park of the opinion of probable construction costs.”
This project included 4,920 linear feet of pipe. So in the end the bid was $801 per lineal foot, 320% higher than what it has cost to put in water main lines during the “past several years” and without Stan Nord in attendance, no council member seriously questioned whether or not it was necessary to spend such an exorbitant amount on this project at this time.
