CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The Kanawha County Judicial Building renovation project will soon have a new bidder.
The original bids for the project, which intends to renovate the building and add the appropriate space for three incoming magistrates and a circuit judge, came in at $16 million, however, the Kanawha County Commission did not want the project to be more than around $13 million.
Lance Wheeler
Commission President Lance Wheeler says the difference was far too drastic.
“Initially, we believed it was going to come in at $13.5 million, which is what we were told from our architects and engineers. The lowest bid of two bidders, came in over $16 million. That’s a 25% increase,” Wheeler said. “That is way too much money to spend on a project that the taxpayers are going to have to take a bond out and go into debt.”
Once commissioners found out about the steep price tag, they were poised to cut costs if possible, and let the original bidder know $16 million was not feasible.
Commissioner Ben Salango says the commission is doing what any citizen would do if one of their projects came in a large percentage over the original budget.
Ben Salango
“No one in their right mind, if a project came in 30 or 40 percent over budget, if it was at your house or your business, there’s no way in the world you would go forward with that. You’d try to make deductions if possible,” Salango said. “That’s all we’re trying to do. We want to make sure we’re spending people’s money appropriately and not going three, four, five million dollars over budget.”
Salango also says the commission’s last step before going to a re-bid was entering a negotiation phase with the contractor.
“We tried to work with the contractor, unfortunately, we weren’t making any headway, and so, what we decided to do was not sign the contract with the contactor and just put it out to bid and re-design it,” Salango said.
The commission and its team of architects, Silling Architects, entered a 30-day negotiation phase. In the midst of that 30-day window, Jody Driggs of Silling Architects reported to the commission that transparent conversations were had with the contractors. The contractors said that they felt a reasonable and competitive bid had been put together, and complexities such as night work and a condensed schedule were reasons for the bid of $16 million.
Wheeler says he had hoped the negotiation phase would not result in a re-bid, but the contractor had a firm argument for why they didn’t have any wiggle room.
“We were hopeful that we’d be able to have the conversations with the contractor, and I think they made some understandable arguments regarding the specs we sent over. We’re in a world of inflation right now…that’s no different when it comes to the construction, especially a construction of this magnitude, “Wheeler said. “We were hopeful that we might be able to have those conversations not having to go to a re-bid, but we were always prepared that, if the number was not satisfactory to the commission, that we would go and re-bid this project and look for more bidders.”
Wheeler says the recent disappointing process will be a learning experience, as new, more intriguing specks will be put before potential bidders.
“I think if we change some of the specs and make it more enticing for another company to come in,” Wheeler said. “We had nine pre-bidders come and look at the specks, they came and actually did a sight visit of the building and we were very hopeful at that time that we’d get a lot of bidders. Only two of them came and actually bidding on the final bid day. That was disappointing.”
Wheeler also says the commission and Silling Architects are going to look at new methods to the project will be brought to the table, all in an effort to save taxpayers money.
“We’re going to look at different methods of doing it this time. We might spread out the bid, so separate it into different phases so we have multiple bids for the different project,” Wheeler said. “We’re going to look at moving from night work to day work, that way we’re going to be able to save some money there. We’re going to look at every facet of how we can save money on this project.”
While the commission knows it needs to move quickly, Wheeler says they will not be rushed into a decision that puts taxpayers in a bad spot.
“We’re going to have to take a close look at this and I know that we’re going to move as quickly as possible, but this is taxpayer money,” Wheeler said. “I am not going to rush into something just so we can say we got it done quicker when it’s money that’s coming out of the taxpayers.”
The Kanawha County Commission will meet again on Thursday.