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Relief
Greets New Bids For P.C. YMCA Center
By BEVERLY BRYANT
News Staff Writer
The first new bids for work on the Ponca City Aquatic and Family
Center — YMCA were opened Thursday and greeted with relief.
Ponca City officials and leaders of Lambert Construction of
Stillwater, the construction manager at risk for the project, said
Friday they are pleased with the bids that were opened for the first
six parcels of work.
"The bids are almost $20,000 below our budgeted
price for the work that was to be completed in those six bid
packages," said Stephen Mitchell of Lambert Construction of
Stillwater. "We feel really good about the efforts of the city, the
architect and Lambert to get the numbers closer to being in the
budget."
Mitchell, who is a vice president of Lambert Construction and
manager of the project, said Thursday's bids reflect an even greater
savings when compared to bids that were opened for the project in
July 2008.
"From then to now, with the value engineering we've all done, the
numbers are really at least $500,000 less than the numbers we had in
July for the work in those six bid packages," Mitchell said.
Thursday's bids covered six pieces of the project:
- Stormwater Pollution Prevention Program and
temporary fencing;
- Earthwork and site demolition;
- Site utilities and storm water;
- Stacked block retaining walls;
- Paving asphalt and concrete, and
- Sidewalks and miscellaneous concrete.
After Lambert Construction completes its analysis
of the bids, it will present its recommendations to the Ponca City
Board of Commissioners for final approval.
Three bids that were opened in July were for the total project and
came in between $25.4 million and $26.1 million, nearly $10 million
more than engineers' estimates.
City Commissioners voted in July to reject all of the bids, and in a
joint meeting with the YMCA's Board of Directors voted to hire a
construction manager at risk to work with the city and the architect
to perform value engineering on the project and rebid the project in
separate packets.
In addition, Ponca City residents voted in December to extend a
half-cent sales tax funding the project for up to five years to
increase the money available for the project.
Friday morning Mayor Homer Nicholson said city officials, through
the construction manager at risk, are still looking at the bid
numbers and are doing due diligence to evaluate all of the bids.
"We were encouraged that the numbers appeared to be coming in less
than our projections, but we really haven't gotten the numbers down
to where we can do any interpretations," Nicholson said. "There are
caveats that we have to go through and we need to analyze the
numbers."
The national economic slump also is working in the city's favor, he
said.
"We do plan to move as fast as possible to get all of our other bid
packages out as soon as we can during the down economy, to take
advantage of low materials costs and the extra availability of
skilled craftsmen," Nicholson said.
"When our first bids came in, we were at the worst of times. Now we
may be at the best of times. We're pretty optimistic that we have
some pretty good numbers," the mayor said.
City Manager Craig Stephenson said Friday he was very happy with the
number of companies that submitted bids this time.
"That was a good sign. I was pleased with the numbers as they came
in. We are still working with those numbers with the construction
manager at risk, but they are much better than the numbers we got
July 10, which is good for us to know," Stephenson said.
The city manager said he expected to have the numbers analyzed by
the first part of the week.
"At this point, we are very happy with the numbers and hope those
continue on into the next phase," he said.
Stephenson said it was difficult to compare the new bids to those
received in July, since the July bids were not broken down in the
same way.
"And with the value engineering we've done, we're not really
comparing apples to apples," Stephenson said.
Stephenson said more bid packages for subsequent work will be opened
in March.
