NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The Hutchinson City Council approved the 2023 waterline project at their meeting on Tuesday.
According to agenda documents, the City of Hutchinson completed a waterline condition audit that indicated that the City needs to replace 3 miles of waterline per year (roughly 1% of the system annually). The city will replace 1.5 miles due to budget constraints. The waterlines chosen for replacement in 2023 were installed between 1925 and 1968. The audit identified the age and sections requiring the most maintenance as the starting point.
The project will consist of the new installation of 1,225 linear feet of 8” water main pipe and 3,406 linear feet of 6” water main pipe at various locations generally bound between K-61 and Town/1st and 9th.
The Kansas State Revolving Fund (SRF) loan agreement currently held by the City will be the funding source of this project. The loan amount is $1,205,000, interest rate of 2.13%, and loan duration of up to 20 years.
"State Revolving Fund projects are complicated and come with many state and federal requirements that the city and the contractor must follow," said Jim Weber, Consulting Engineer with JEO Consulting. "We received bids on Feb. 7. Following the bid opening, we went through a rigorous review to make sure they met the requirements of the loan agreement.
JEO Consulting performed an Engineer’s Review of Bids and Recommendation of Award. The recommendation is to sign the contract with APAC – Kansas, Inc. in the amount of $1,098,607.00. APAC was not the low bidder on the project.
"One of the requirements of the specifications is that the contractors be pre-qualified to perform the type of work involved in the project, as is common with most projects here at the City of Hutch," Weber said. "We use a KDOT pre-qualified bidders list for the types of work that are to be performed. KDOT reviews contractor qualifications annually, based on financial capacity, technical abilities, and the equipment that they have. Contractors voluntarily submit this information to KDOT. All of the bidders in this case have regularly submitted to KDOT and we have to look at what the actual qualifications are. There are 26 different classifications for qualification. We recommended that contractors for this project should be qualified in classification I, which is miscellaneous concrete and classification J, which is pipe."
The low bidder was not on the list as qualified for pipe.
"Pipe installation is the primary purpose of the project," Weber said. "We felt, under the circumstances, that the low bidder is not qualified to perform the project."
Ward Davis Builders was the low bidder, but only by about $60,000. The contract with APAC was approved 4-0. Jon Richardson was absent for the vote Tuesday.
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