In August of 2015, the Board of Commissioners approved an agreement with Sullivan Engineering, Inc. (SEI) in the amount of $551,150 for engineering design services associated with the Sunset Road/Ragsdale Road intersection improvement project. The scope of work included in the original agreement included all required property survey work, geotechnical work, preliminary design, right-of-way design documents, preparation of construction plan documents, and other miscellaneous tasks. From an environmental permitting standpoint, the included scope of work assumed the same general permitting process as the last phase of Split Log Road which also included a crossing of Owl Creek and the associated Nashville crayfish environmental issues. The original agreement scope of work did not include any funding for construction administration services, including the required construction phase stream monitoring for the Nashville crayfish.
As staff and the engineers began working with TDEC and the Corp of Engineers on the environmental permitting process, we were notified that the Corp of Engineers was making changes to the process effective January 2016. The changes, along with a lack of clear guidance from the involved agencies regarding whether a standard TDOT culvert would be acceptable for the Ragsdale road crossing of Owl Creek versus a clear span bridge, resulted in significant additional design work beyond the original scope of work. In addition to the work associated with the creek crossing issue, the engineer also had to address the new requirements associated with the Indiana bat. Finally, once preliminary design work was completed, staff determined it was necessary to conduct some additional hydraulic modeling and analysis to confirm that the proposed bridge structure would not result in any rise in the flood levels upstream of the new bridge. The total costs of these additional services for permitting approvals, bat habitat documentation and hydraulic modeling and analysis is $71,350. Note that while the added environmental work has increased costs, SEI was successful in getting the Corp of Engineers to approve the standard TDOT culvert instead of a bridge, which will save several hundred thousand dollars of construction costs.
Now that design is complete and the project is out for bid, an agreement for construction administration services is necessary. Standard construction administration services to be provided by SEI include weekly field observations of work, calculation of quantities, review of all pay requests, issuance of any change directives, preparation of any required supplemental instructions to the contractor, etc. For this project, additional construction administration services are required including environmental stream monitoring by the McDonald, Co., bridge construction oversight by Benesch, the bridge designer, and concrete sampling, sinkhole remediation oversight, and rock excavation monitoring by AMEC. The cost for these services has been estimated based on conservative time allowances for the tasks and is not to exceed $204,500.
The supplemental engineering services and construction administration services combined total an additional $275,850. As discussed during the recent budget kick-off meeting, staff anticipates additional funding may be necessary for completion of this project. Such funding would be allocated as part of a planned FY 2017 year-end General Fund transfer of excess funds to the Capital Projects Fund. Construction bids for this project are due in February, so we will have a clearer picture of just how much additional funding will be required to complete construction of this project prior to completion of the budget preparation process. |