This news about Gallatin’s water treatment plant is a bitter pill to swallow. It seems incredulous that the “professional” engineers who planned the project missed cost projections so badly that the improvement project might be scrapped.
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Not many businesses I know can miss a price by 30% and keep in business. But then, that’s the racket that engineering firms play in the way of public work projects. They get paid first. In fact, the City of Gallatin has already paid a significant portion of the $257,430 bill that project engineers are to be paid, spending funds provided by the USDA in anticipation of a completed project. That is customary in the normal financing of things such as this.
But hardly anything sounds “normal” about this project.
It’s not clear whether the project can be appropriately downsized to fit the money available. The temptation might be accept cutbacks that make “major improvement,” certainly as originally envisioned, ring hollow.
If our city officials elect to kill the project, will Snyder & Associates give their engineering fee back?
Hearing Andy Macias two-step his way through Monday night’s board meeting builds little confidence. Bids were opened March 3; the engineering firm had several days to identify the specifics which pushed the actual construction bids beyond expectations. At least twice Macias said “We’ll make it right” even when confronted with no real prospects for additional funding.
This lists the project’s budget when CDBG funding was approved in April, 2012, for a system to deliver 500 gpm:
Water Treatment and Storage $3,954,982
Land Acquisition $10,000
Engineering Design $257,430
Construction Inspection $194,573
Other Professional Services $170,005
Administration $26,500
Legal $5,000
Total $4,618,490
The low bid submitted on the project was by Irvinbilt of Chillicothe, totalling $6,029,300 (base bid of $5,909,300 with two alternates for $114,000 and $6,000.
Most curious was the confusion over the target output of the new plant. Nobody quite knew how plans grew from 500 gpm (as stated in the CDBG funding paperwork) to 700 gpm that the construction companies bid. There sounded like unexplained differences between total output per day and gallons of treated water generated per minute.
But shouldn’t this be simple math?
If what we now know today was known when the project began in 2010, things wouldn’t have gone this far. What the engineers expected was simply too good to be true: twice the treatment capacity delivered in half the time …on budget.
This is disgusting. The people we elect depend on professionals to assist in making sound decisions. The aldermen were unexpectedly blindsided and now face hard decisions that no one anticipated.
The temptation to let emotions sway continuing conversations is real. But aldermen would be wise to cap frustrations, at least until the issue is resolved. We’ve got good people sitting around the table still trying to figure all this out, better folks than me. I’m not sure I could hold my temper.
Short of some hocus-pocus, this engineering blunder looks like a deal killer. And we’re the losers.