Bids and Benefits
I wasn't personally able to attend the bid opening today at City Hall. However, I did make a quick call to Larry Laws of MWH to get his take of how the first opening went.
He shared with me that this was one of the two largest areas of construction for the SouthWest 5 UEP. Denco was the low bidder. If you're not familiar with Denco, they're one of the real success stories of our UEP.
A small vendor who mostly handled the "hard work" in Ft. Myers, they started out by doing deep work and congested city street work in Ft. Myers. They answered the advertisements in 2001 for new contractors for our UEP. Since then they have slowly but steadily grown in size and become a worthy competitor in the bidding for our utility projects.
Their winning bid of $10,236,352.00 is a good sign, nearly 3 million below the engineers estimate. The engineer appeared to be very conservative, coming in at $13,156,521.00. All of the bids were priced well, the market price showing approximately $11.5 million dollars. SW Utilities came in at 11.2 million, Forsberg at 11.4 million, Diamond at 11.6 million and Mitchell and Stark at 12.6 million. The remaining bids were 13.9M (Reynolds), 15.9M (Westral) and D.N. Higgins came in the highest at $16,752,762.
Only one resident was in attendance before the opening, Councilwoman Bertolini. Just before opening, Joe Lentini arrived and just after, Lynn Rosko. Several members of the press were also in attendance.
All in all, a solid first opening, with a good outlook for this project. We've got more bidders and a highly competitive bidding environment. I believe it bodes well for the SW5 assessment amount. After all of the openings occur, we will get a final price from the city on the assessments. I will be watching every week until the openings are completed.
On a closing note, I've recently published copies of the memos from Mark Mason about price comparisons between Bonita Springs Utility and Marco Islands Utility with the Cape Coral Utility. The construction costs at the Cape were significantly lower than either of the two other cities. Please take a look at the memos and judge for yourselves. I think that the facts are proving that we've made a decent choice in MWH and we are coming in at a lower price than neighboring communities. Can we now work together and find a different way to PAY the costs, much like our neighbors have?
Bonita Springs
Marco Island
Edit: Low Bidder. Denco still has to pass final qualification. Thanks for pointing that out Ralph.
He shared with me that this was one of the two largest areas of construction for the SouthWest 5 UEP. Denco was the low bidder. If you're not familiar with Denco, they're one of the real success stories of our UEP.
A small vendor who mostly handled the "hard work" in Ft. Myers, they started out by doing deep work and congested city street work in Ft. Myers. They answered the advertisements in 2001 for new contractors for our UEP. Since then they have slowly but steadily grown in size and become a worthy competitor in the bidding for our utility projects.
Their winning bid of $10,236,352.00 is a good sign, nearly 3 million below the engineers estimate. The engineer appeared to be very conservative, coming in at $13,156,521.00. All of the bids were priced well, the market price showing approximately $11.5 million dollars. SW Utilities came in at 11.2 million, Forsberg at 11.4 million, Diamond at 11.6 million and Mitchell and Stark at 12.6 million. The remaining bids were 13.9M (Reynolds), 15.9M (Westral) and D.N. Higgins came in the highest at $16,752,762.
Only one resident was in attendance before the opening, Councilwoman Bertolini. Just before opening, Joe Lentini arrived and just after, Lynn Rosko. Several members of the press were also in attendance.
All in all, a solid first opening, with a good outlook for this project. We've got more bidders and a highly competitive bidding environment. I believe it bodes well for the SW5 assessment amount. After all of the openings occur, we will get a final price from the city on the assessments. I will be watching every week until the openings are completed.
On a closing note, I've recently published copies of the memos from Mark Mason about price comparisons between Bonita Springs Utility and Marco Islands Utility with the Cape Coral Utility. The construction costs at the Cape were significantly lower than either of the two other cities. Please take a look at the memos and judge for yourselves. I think that the facts are proving that we've made a decent choice in MWH and we are coming in at a lower price than neighboring communities. Can we now work together and find a different way to PAY the costs, much like our neighbors have?
Bonita Springs
Marco Island
Edit: Low Bidder. Denco still has to pass final qualification. Thanks for pointing that out Ralph.
posted by Lloyd at 2:51 PM
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1 Comments:
Lloyd,
I'm not sure if you have considered this, but in case you have not, you really should consider running for City Council...your knowledge of issues is amazing and your follow through/research is great too. You'd make a very well balanced and respected council member! And one that is not just one-issued focused.
Tropical Escape
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