When the City decides to do a project, we go through a lot of work just to bring the project to bid. There is usually some kind of public process to get ideas about design. Then there’s process to through with one of our citizen advisory boards and sometimes the City Council. Then we typically hire an architect or engineer to do the design and prepare a cost estimate. Then, we go through all the necessary legal steps to publicly solicit and evaluate competitive bids. It’s really quite a process.
So it’s always interesting to see what happens when a city government goes through all that process and then gets bids that exceed their cost estimate. With all the time, money, and energy put into just getting the bids, it can be easy to justify a little extra construction cost just to avoid the bidding costs again. If it is truly is just a “little extra cost”, I can see that. But it’s what happens when it’s more than a “little”, but maybe slightly less than a “lot” of extra cost that challenges the decision-making skills of government officials.
For example, see this intersection:
Here’s a view with no cars lined up:
This traffic signal faces cars that are leaving the SouthWest Station area and turning on to Technology Drive. In the master plan for the Purgatory Creek Recreation Area, which lies directly south of SouthWest Station on the south side of Technology Drive, there is going to be a road that would connect to this intersection. The new road would go into the green grassy area right under the traffic signal you see in this photo. So, instead of seeing this traffic signal and being forced to turn either left or right on to Technology Drive, you would have the choice to go straight and drive into the park.
At our City Council meeting this week, staff presented the Council with four competitive bids to construct this new road to access the park. The bids were generated after going through all the process I just rambled on about above.
So, what happened? Staff recommended to the Council that all four bids be rejected. The engineers estimate for the project was $311,000. The lowest of the four bids was $357,172.28. We want to do this project, but the difference between what we budgeted for the project and what the low bid came in at was more than the “little extra cost” that we could justify to ourselves to award the contract.
The Council accepted our recommendation. They rejected all four bids. We will put the project back on the shelf for now and put it out to bid again early next year when we believe the bidding climate might be more competitive and more apt to yield lower construction prices.
Patience and prudence ruled the day.
