Published: May 08, 2008 10:34 am            

RLCD awards work contract

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By TESA CULLI

tesa.culli@register-news.com

BENTON — The construction contract for water plant upgrades and renovations at the Rend Lake Conservancy District was awarded Wednesday, with River City Construction coming in as low bidder.

“In addition to the base bid, we also asked each bidder to submit alternate bids,” RLCD general manager Keith Thomason explained. “The idea was to find out how much could be saved if some of the items were postponed. If the savings were big enough, we might not want to do them now.”

The alternate bids were for how much would be reduced if piping and valves were not replaced; the replacement of three raw water pumps; and an air berth cleaning system on the inlet raw water screen.

River City Construction came in with a base bid of $18.8 million. The alternate bid reductions were $350,000 for the pipes; $318,000 for the water pumps; and $60,000 for the inlet system. The board opted to take the alternate one, which would mean the older piping and valves will not be replaced.

“We will still go ahead and do two and three, because the savings weren’t enough to take out those projects,” Thomason said. “The pumps are original equipment, so they wanted to get them replaced so we can have all important rotating equipment replaced.”

Thomason said the piping and valves are functional and will continue to work for several years.

A second bid and alternates were submitted from Plocher Construction of the Metro East area. Plocher submitted a base bid of $20.770 million, with bid alternates of $329,000, $342,000 and $58,000, respectively.

In addition, the board discussed construction engineering on the project.

Thomason said it was recommended to the board from the construction design engineer that the district use in-house people to perform construction management.

“They said, ‘here’s a low-cost way to do it,” Thomason said. “Since we already have qualified in-house people, we can do that work without hiring an outside firm.”

Thomason said the board did not act on the recommendation but would be making a decision at a later meeting. The board also held a preliminary discussion on how much money to keep in contingency funds and received an update on the pilot work on the water treatment membranes to stay in compliance with Illinois Environmental Protection Agency requirements.

        

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