Control Engineering

1/2/2007
January 2, 2007

Happy New Year to everyone.

The biggest obstacle to moving this project forward is getting the City comfortable that our selected open project architecture will integrate well with what is being planned for the overall $600M 15-year sewer improvement program. That program is not fully defined, however, with the initial study and consultant recommendations expected in March.
The city basically has 3 alternatives to choose from: re-bidding the Phase II contract, incorporating the Phase II work into another contract, or scrapping the project and starting over.

Re-bidding the Phase II contract would ensure a delay of the project of another 6-9 months. It would also increase costs significantly since contractor prices are way up from the original pre-hurricane Katrina prices of the last bid.

Of course, scrapping the project isn't very palatable as it would further extend the project completion and return no value for the hundreds of thousands already spent.

Delays cost money: oversight of the re-bidding process, modification of specifications, material and labor rate increases, new studies, more drawings. The fastest and most cost-effective option for the City will be to continue the project by incorporating the Phase II work into another contract and continuing the project mostly as planned.

Posted by on January 2, 2007 | Comments (0)