City rejects bid after engineering misestimate

WASHINGTON — City council members voted unanimously to reject the lone bid for a sewer boring project at the developing MSJ subdivision after it came in nearly $265,000 over the estimated $135,000 cost.

Council Member Steve Gault said he was concerned by the gap between estimated and actual costs.

“Aren’t we paying somebody to tell us real close on these bids where we’re going to be?” he said.

Jack Pope, vice president of Garden & Associates LTD., which gave the engineering estimate, said the bid was high for a handful of reasons.

“One is the timing of the year when it was bid, contractors are busy so that inflated the cost,” he said. “The subcontractors that the contractor was going to use was going to use a method … more expensive than we actually proposed in the plans, so those two items led to the higher cost.”

Pope said the underestimate was the product of an outlying bid, not a flaw in the planning process.

“There was nothing we missed I don’t believe,” he said. “It was a highly irregular bid … We have a history over there of getting pretty decent bids, so when these happen I don’t want to say it’s embarrassing, but it’s one of those things you’ve got to deal with in construction.”

City Administrator Deanna McCusker said the project would get done eventually, one way or another.

“We plan to throw it in with the MSJ infrastructure project,” she said. “It will still get done, it has to get done because we have to connect to the sewer. But we’re hoping by combining it with that project we’ll get a lot better costs.”

Mayor Jaron Rosien said the situation was abnormal.

“This is not our usual motion, but we had budgeted $125,000, our engineers estimated $135,000, and a returned bid of (just under) $400,000,” he said. “Normally we’re not off by that much, it’s unusual.”

Rosien said MSJ’s developers were not concerned by the delay from rejecting the bid, given the subdivision’s lack of other infrastructure at the current stage of construction.

“If the streets aren’t there, the houses aren’t there,” he said. “Therefore, the use of what the sewer does will not be there.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com