Travis County Commissioners Court
April 4, 2006
Item 14
We have returned from a very brief recess, and we are ready to take up item number 14. My guess is this will be the only other item we will be able to take up this morning. 14 is to reject all bids received for ifb number b 0601020-mg, gardner-betts juvenile justice center, detention shell buildout package b.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners. Cyd grimes, county purchasing agenda. With me is ms. Barr from the bab company and sylvia mcpherson also from the barr company and we have alicia strickland and the purchasing department and also mr. Bryce is here somewhere. We are here this morning to reject bids on the gardner-betts shellout. We opened these bids on March the eighth. We received two bids. Our low bidder was about 100% over our cost estimate. So facilities management is recommending and we are concurring that we need to reject these bids, we had two, and regroup within the department and figure out what we're going to have to do. I think that we will eventually, they will have to come back to Commissioners court and pbo and ask for additional funding. And some of that will become everett as ms. Barr makes her presentation. Our recommendation this morning is to reject these two bids, authorize staff to go back to the table and either -- and most likely rebid this project. Ms. Barr is here, she would like to make a brief presentation to the Commissioners court and of course we are here to answer your questions.
>> any questions of staff?
>> sometimes when we're dealing with things like on construction projects with tnr that they go up, cost of concrete, cost of steel, cost of whatever. Do we have a sense of what it is, were there different categories in terms of alternatives that were just not close to reality in terms of what we bid? One of the estimates of the mechanical, electrical and plumbing. One of the issues we have is the market. Costs have gone up from when we originally estimated this budget. The second thing is there was only one plumber, electrician available. So you had the same plumbing persons submitting the bid. Without that many bidders, there's a lot of work going on, so we think the market, people were busy, they didn't bid and some other factors. So there's definitely costs and market influences. As we all know, the last two years, fuel costs, lumber costs have -- almost 60% increases. So it's understandable why our estimate has been kind -- our estimates have been blown because of the market conditions. However, it is the opinion of fm that the bids were also somewhat inflated. So we're kind of somewhere in the middle.
>> thank you.
>> so if we were to follow staff's religious and reject -- staff's recommendation and reject the two bids that we received, what would be the next step?
>> facilities would get together with the department and look at some -- maybe some value engineering, although they've looked at it pretty extensively. Maybe do some phasing. And I think ultimately just my opinion is that they're going to have to come back to Commissioners court for additional funding. I don't think we can do the project at almost a little over half a million dollars that we have in the budget right now.
>> ms. Barr, you have a slightly different perspective?
>> I don't disagree with any of what cyd has said, but real briefly what I知 here to do is to talk a little bit about the project and also to talk about some of the response that was generated by fm. And I want to preface it by saying that I did go to the judge to talk to him about the project after we had received notification from purchasing that the project would not be going forward, and I also want to say that my meeting with the jowj was very positive -- with the judge was very positive. I did not go there with the intent of slamming anybody. I think those were my closing comments, that to me it was very important that we handle this as a vendor that has a concern and that I was hoping that the project would go forward. The main point being, my meeting with the judge was very positive and it was not intended to hurt anybody or to disparage anybody.
>> we're getting a little bit of feedback on the microphone. Can you point it a little more in your direction? I think that will fix it.
>> and so what I知 going to do is I知 going to respond to that e-mail, but also give you some perspective about the bid at the end. I think I知 going to start out with my ending, and my ending is that we're here to work with Travis County, and so I知 going to go to the end because I think it's important that you all know I知 not here on an antagonistic basis. From the barr company's perspective, we've always had a positive working relationship with Travis County. We would like to continue that relationship; however, it does concern me that the name of my company is used in line with a bid that is not realistic. We've been in business for 25 years and my sole focus and what I do has been in construction, cost and cost management. When you take this approach it doesn't really affect us, but it could possibly affect you with other vendors. I知 here to help resolve the issue, not really to cause a problem. And I don't think that many other vendors would be as willing to come forward. To tell you the truth, I really don't want to be here. I get real nervous and I don't like it. And so I want to move forward. I just heard what purchasing's recommendation is and that it's supported by facilities. Obviously we're not happy about that because we do spend a lot of time on our bids. It's a lot of work for us, but if that's the county's decision, then we look to you all to make those decisions. As a result of the cost analysis done by the barr company, it is our professional opinion that there are very few, if any areas, that can be streamlined to reduce the cost of the project. We bid on other Travis County projects and when they have rebid, we have always had a lot of suggestions about what the county might do with its design, they can change from o mechanical system to another. And in this case we did evaluate the documents and it's pretty bare bones. It's what is required in order for you to get the facility that you're trying to get in this particular contract. If it is the intent of the court to construct this facility, then it's -- and again, it is a professional opinion that the costs submitted on behalf of my company and the second low bidder are true and actual. They're not -- they're not unrealistic in the sense that when we're doing a design project, basically what we do is we do probable cost estimates all the way through. When you get the bid, it's real. It's as real as they get. It's what's in the document. Unless for some reason the contractor misses a point, and if that's the case I guess both of the contractors in this case missed it. Our opinion is that a project of this magnitude cannot be built on a lower cost unless some items are deleted. I cannot give you any suggestions of what to delete because it's basic. It's basic. And also what I壇 like to say is that to delay this project and to phase it is going to cost you more money. The cost of construction, ms. Sonleitner, in my presentation I do have some examples of what the cost of construction has done. And it may be that when this budget was initially established, it was established at a different point in time other than the current construction market that we're dealing with, and that certainly can be part of the problem. But in our opinion to delay the project it's just going to cost you 20 or 30% more. If this is what you need, if what is in the documents is what you need and you delay it and rebid it and don't take anything out of it and/or phase it, it's going to cost you more money because any time you have two contractors working on a project, that's what happens. I知 going to go back to the beginning of my presentation and just kind of deal a little bit with an issue that has been bothering certainly my company, and that is it would be very helpful if Travis County published its construction budget. We don't want a probable cost estimate that fm -- that they do as they're going through the projects. We want to know what has the entity allocated through its bond, through whatever the funding source is for the construction of the project.
>> [one moment, please, for change in captioners]
>> aren't those supposed to like match up? Because you can't say, well, we think that it's probably going to cost this. But either shortchange or overestimate how much money this court or any other governmental entity needs to set aside. Ought those things not be all the same as well?
>> it depends on when the budget is set.
>> okay.
>> for instance, if a budget was set two or three years ago, today it's going to make a big difference.
>> I知 absolutely with you. We need to also make sure that we have a valid contingency budget. As you move through the process that budget can get smaller, smaller, smaller as you move closer to reality. I don't disagree with you.
>> the reason that it's important for us to get this, if that -- I知 not going to read through my whole slide. I would like for you all to look at it. It takes over 200 hours of our staff time to bid these projects. We are normally focused on that one, so it takes us away from other construction contracts that we may have in place, but also takes away from bidding other projects. If we have the budget, the construction budget, then we make decisions as -- what my office does is that they put in front of me three or four projects at a time and say: this is what's out there. I will ask them, what's the budget? You know, how many days? What are the liquidated damages? We go through and decide the one that we want to bid, prior to bid date, because guys you don't get the bid until bid day. I do a preliminary estimate and we decide wow, this is way off. Or yeah it's going to work. And so I can decide for myself what that little -- with that little bit of time up front if I want to go forward and spend all of my staff time on a project that may not go forward. Again I知 responding to the e-mail, one of the comments made is that contractors should compete against each other. We do, but only at the bid opening. I don't know what any other contractor is doing, and when I bid a project, I have to be accountable to my firm. That's who I respond to. When I bid a project, it's too low, that means the company is going to lose money. So that kind of brings me to the next point. That is that f.m. Does not give out probable cost estimates. That's okay. We don't want the probable cost estimates. Because -- because just in this case, for instance, I think the suggestion there is that we might use the probable cost estimate. But if that had been the case, in this particular project, I would have had a lot of over $650,000. So as business people, we don't take anybody else's probable cost estimates, I知 going to tell you that in my company, I am involved in every single bid, nobody bids for me. So for me to take a probable cost estimate and turn it in as a bid, it's just not something that any responsible construction company would do.
>> probable cost estimate is what now?
>> a probable cost estimate is what -- the design -- what the design team, whether it's in house or outside of -- of the facility, they do an estimate of the project as it's progressing through the design phases. We have three design phases, the schematic, design development, so it grows in detail as you go through the process. We are not requesting that. The reason I知 here is that we have bid at least four projects that have had to rebid. And that concerns me. I mean, everybody, every entity does rebid projects. But I think in this case it's a little bit harder than what's normal. Some of the slides, to answer your questions, I知 not going to go through it, but it's the level of detail that's required for each of the phases. The next one that we want to go to is the one that says f.m. Awards projects, 90 to 90% of the time. My point is that -- is that Travis County does not award projects 90 to 95% of the time. The first time they bid. They do go on, the projects do get worked on, eventually they are put out to bid and they come in on budget. And I think that -- that that needs to be streamlined. I think we need to get closer on the mark the first time that the projects go out. Another thing that I think it's important to think about, there's some comparisons made in the response about -- about square foot costs and per bed costs and it's -- it's part of the comparison is being made to new construction. This project is a renovation project. It has -- even though -- even though there are -- there are part of the mechanical electrical and plumbing systems in place, there's a significant portion of them that remain yet to be put in place. I値l talk about that in a little bit more. But part of my point that sometime renovation costs will be -- can be more expensive than new construction. One of the things that I found with our vendors, for instance with the masonry, that the access is very limited. We have to double load, double unload and reload the masonry. It gets more expensive.
>> just because of how we can get to the project. The you could that the -- the truck that the masonry, it comes on a -- an 18 wheeler, a flatbed.
>> security issues.
>> also there's a gate that we have to go through. Just access because it's an existing facility. We have reload it outside, load it, take it inside, is that why it's double.
>> well, part of the -- part of it, yes, that's why it's doubled. The loading and unloading. The general contractors really should not be used as an estimating service. When we bid a job, we bid to enter into a contract. I mean, the reason that I made an investment to bid this project for my company is that it fitted -- it fit the needs of our company at this point in time in terms of bonding and other available work and we bid it because we hoped to enter into a contract. I think it's important to note that -- that the more contractors that come to the table, the -- the better your bids are going to be. And I think that's something that you can judge for yourselves. I mean, I think you can certainly ask the question how many bidders have been add these bids. I know on this one there was only two. Here are some examples of increases that be substantiated. Fuel has increased over 57%. I think we all know that. The majority of the fuel that we use is diesel. People may say we are not using equipment on this. We are not because a lot of the shell and foundation is in place. But it does affect all of our -- all of our equipment that -- masonry that I just talked about, all equipment delivered, whether it's mechanical, plumbing fixtures, so it does affect us. Concrete has increased 35% to 37%. This is based on what I paid on the precinct 3 project last year, what I知 paying now. That's how much it's increased. 35.7%. It's continuing to rise and we are facing a possible shortage. One of the reasons for that is the cement is going overseas and we actually did face a shortage on one of our 88 projects, that was the fourth month of the week when we could not get concrete because it was being rationed this past year steel has increased 30% and it is also rising and we are also facing a possible shortage because that, too, is going overseas. Masonry has increased 10% and associated concrete in that particular material has gone up 35.7%. Lumber has increased 20%. So when, you know, when we talk about, you know, why -- why a budget may not meet a bid, these are some real valid reasons. Construction has gone up significantly. The bar company's bid is not a realistic bid. This is the one item that to me I really do have a difficult time with it. The definition of realistic is the quality or state of being not artificial, fraudulent or an illusion -- well, it's not artificial because we bid on the market. It's not flawed lent because I don't know -- fraudulent because I don't know what I could have done to commit fraud. It's not an illusion I mean we work real hard to these bids. It takes us a lot of time to put them together. Secondly you did receive a second bid and that bid was only 7% higher than ours. And all that does is support the fact that our bid is a realistic bid. Does it meet the budget? It doesn't. But I don't think that -- that the responsibility needs to lie on the bar company that we didn't provide a realistic bid. I don't think that's fair. For that -- for it to be presented in that manner. Our bid is based on current construction costs, on real labor costs, on detailed subcontractor bids and on real material costs. I -- I知 going to move on because I know that, you know, we only have a certain amount of time. But I would like to talk to you a little bit about some research that I did about -- about jail construction costs. I know we are not in new york, there the price is $340,000 per cell. I looked up a Texas economic case study, the average cost of construction per prison bed ranges from -- from $50,000 at a minimum security site to 100,000 or more in a maximum security facility. Justice concept.com states during 2006 estimate for new jail beds were found to be as high as $100,000 per bed. The next one says the barr company does not have any experience in jail cell buildout. And that's inaccurate. I don't know where that information came from. But -- but -- but in December of 2005 we actually bid a project for the bastrop county jail, we prepared a bid for it. And my bid was at $8.8 million. That budget was 5 million. I ended up not submitting my bid because they had published the budget at 5 million. I talked to you a little bit about how we made decisions about bids. My largest project today at that point had been 3.2. Normally we don't -- we don't go for a new project unless it's -- if it's more than twice the size of the one that we previously -- previously largest one, we don't do it. When I saw that my numbers were at 8.8 million, I already have my people in bastrop, I said go ahead and go to the bid opening, we are not going to turn in our bid. But I completed my bid. That bid came in, the -- the low bid that was opened was -- came in at $9.4 million. That's in bastrop. So that represented 1.529 over their budget. So -- so the other thing about jails is that the equipment, specialized equipment used in them is very expensive. If you look at the trends that are going on throughout the country, you will see that it's a captive audience. I mean, every state in the united states has a prison problem. And so -- the equipment, the fixtures, the hardware, that's another -- I didn't get any -- I looked for some -- for some examples of what the increases in those particular materials might be, but I know that they are in high demand. We called bastrop yesterday, they had bid the project under a competitive seal proposal. So they did negotiate with their $9.4 million bid and they -- they awarded a contract for $8.6 million. $3.5 million over their -- their original budget. So those are -- that's an example of something that's just happening down the road. Purchasing, how long was this [indiscernible] the ifb, or p, q, whatever.
>> initially it was out for 21 days. However, due to the fact that we had little interest in the bid we ended up putting it out for an additional 10 to 15 days. Total of about 30, 35 days. It was out on the street.
>> when exactly did it go out on to the street. I知 kind of trying to backtrack back as to whether they went out over the holidays. I知 trying to get a sense of when did this go out on to the street.
>> sometime in February I do believe.
>> [indiscernible]
>> then was there any kind of a sense of what was the schedule? Was there any compression of the schedule, anything that would make this unusual related to how long they had to complete this job?
>> just to get back to your original question, Commissioner, the issue of January 20th, March 8th. So our schedule performance crew and audit leslie was --
>> we had some longer lead items that we had already taken out of this, because we knew there was going to be some long lead items but -- [multiple voices]
>> we had some -- this project goes back, the planning and the -- and the a and e work has been going on for over a year. So -- as far as the schedule --
>> the construction performance schedule period was 140cal dia de los muertoses.
>> -- 14 calendar days.
>> that was giving them extra time because the critical path went through the package a material purchase for the detention detention doors, hardware, security equipment, so the contractor would actually have extra time than what we would normally require if it was all under one contract. Because we were getting out on the street ahead of time with them. So they would be awarded well in advance and be able to handle their submittals and materials to be ready to eject masonry walls when the door frames arrived in the end of April.
>> okay.
>> did you find that to be a realistic estimate of how long --
>> no kind of --
>> it's really more the materials. Then the final thing is were there any special circumstances within our construction bid in terms of you could only do it during daytime hours, limited access, kind of working around some of the staging issues brought up about how this -- had to occur that could -- could make it more complicated or just more difficult to do.
>> the way that the bid was arranged, there was no restriction on work hours. And if you are at all familiar with gardner-betts, the detention building, is an l-shaped building that forms two sides of a secure courtyard. The -- the construction arrangements called for a temporary fence to be erected to separate the whole courtyard and basketball court area from the walkways around it. So that the contractor could use that courtyard for materials staging. So we gave them absolutely the maximum amount of space we could and to facilitate ease of movement between materials staging areas and the shell space on the first floor of the detention building next to the courtyard. And keep them out of the -- out of interface with the -- with the detainees.
>> thank you.
>> all major plumbing, electrical, mechanical, structural and fire lines are already built. That is somewhat true. Because it is trucked in and a lot of the plumbing is --, the vents are there. But my -- my -- first of and you, the vukt ral -- the structural is there, but we have to build all of the interior walls. All of the interior walls are masonry. That bid was $201,000. My electrical bid was $200,000. And we did have multiple bids on that. We had one vendor, I think what cyd was talking about, we had one vendor that ended up being low that will do both the electrical and the mechanical, but we did have multiple bids on that portion of it. The plumbing was $365,000. That was our low bid. The mechanical was $99,000. And the fire, that was a smaller number, it was at 8,250. But all of those right there add up to $873,000. And that -- that's our -- our hard costs. It doesn't include about -- about any of our general conditions and our profit and overhead. So you are probably looking at about -- maybe 950,000 just for -- for those four core elements.
>> the ultimate question is whether these bids are reasonable and how do we has that determination? Make that determination?
>> how do you make that determination? Well, if you get more than one bid and they're in the range, that's what -- you look at -- you look at it first at the primes and see what -- what separation is there between them. And then if you are interested, if you think that it might be something that you want to do, you have a meeting well general contractor and you bring the contract -- the subcontractors in and you determine. That's the best way to do it.
>> okay. So we got two bids on these services and they were within the same range.
>> I知 sorry, sir, you got two prime bids, two general contractor bid. Then I got several bids on the electrical, mechanical and plumbing. And we used the lowest one.
>> okay.
>> so you look at it at two levels is what I知 saying.
>> judge, leslie might want to comment on how we define a realistic bid from f.m.'s perspective.
>> okay.
>> the way facilities management looks at bids includes comparing the bid to the project budget, which is [indiscernible] and also to our internal estimate, which has also been defined as probable, construction costs which is developed after the budget is set, and tracks through the design process. If a bid exceeds the budget, by more than 15% due to market escalation factors, the facilities management typically -- is concerned, especially if it appears there may have been low competition for whatever reason, on that bid, that the county has not gotten the best possible price. And looks to -- to serve the county by recommending it may be prudent to check the market again. To see if -- if we get a better price due to more competition. Cost escalation factors of more than 15 percent over a single budget year are unusual. We may be in that case at this time.
>> did we check the market on these three? Say electrical and plumbing and if so what did we find?
>> by check the market, I mean rebid.
>> okay.
>> we check the price against the internal estimate which is based on -- for those trades, what we received from our engineer, who did a detailed line item. Estimate using the -- the rs means cost. Data base. Which is nationally published and the industry standard for developing cost estimates. At the time these estimates were developed, which was in late 2005, that was the data base that we had available.
>> were the -- were the internal estimates about 50% of what the electrical and plumbing that were finally bid were?
>> I can check that for you.
>> 50%, yeah.
>> I can check that for you.
>> our estimate was half of -- of her bid.
>> our estimates were --
>> actually the difference between the budget is different than the difference between the estimate and the bid. The estimate for the plumbing cost was about 65%. Of what the bid for the plumbing cost is. So -- so we do -- we do look at it on a breakdown basis as well as the overall cost. Because we agree in this -- in this circumstance it appears to be the subcontractors who are driving the cost. We don't know how many plumbing estimates or how many plumbing bids the general contractors received. How many electrical bids they received. We have no way to tell how competitive those individual subcontract numbers are.
>> I can talk to you a little bit about the plumbing. This bid was initially scheduled to bid a couple of weeks prior to when it actually did. I usually hone in on it two or three days before the actual bid. What we do is ford to get nep bids we call the supply houses, say guys have you gotten the Travis County gardner-betts project. Because the supply houses, no mechanical, electrical or plumbing biddings out -- bid goes out unless it goes through a supply house. That's how it works. I tested the market and I called every supply house in the city of Austin, I had my people do that. The first time it was going to bid. They told me there was not a bidder. Not one plumbing company that would bid the job. We also called -- we have a list in our office. We called maybe 18 to 20 plumbers. To see if they had looked at the plans, if they were interested in looking at the plans, they all said no.
>> did they say why?
>> they did. They did.
>> could I phone you later and ask you the reason?
>> they don't want to bid Travis County. Anyway --
>> calling contractors during a [indiscernible] process [laughter]
>> anyway. I called purchasing, I said guys I really want to bid this job, it really did fit in with where we are in our plan. But I can't get a plumbing bid, you know, I cannot get a plumbing bid. While we were calling all of these supply houses, you can get the same information, I said are there any other generals bidding the job. They had not gotten winds of any other generals bidding the job.
>> they would know that.
>> they would know that. Yeah. So I called -- I called purchasing because my fear was you are going to bid this job on your own and it's an unrealistic bid. I didn't want to bid it on my own. You know what the writing on the wall is going to be. I called purchasing says guys, no plumbing, no other primes, any chance of, you know, y'all doing a little bit more work on this. Marvin you can tell them what you did. [indiscernible] I got several electrical, I think three or four, they were all in the same range, I think -- the one that I used was 200, the next was 225. And I had to beg -- and the guy, it's a very good company, one of the best companies that I have ever worked with. So we did test the market and we tried -- we don't just bid these projects. We have a whole -- when you look at this, it's us soliciting the bid from our subcourt contractors. In this packet, kathy, if you might come look for it. Is she here? I mean we send out fax alerts. We are set up to bid. That's what we do. That's our business. So we notified everybody that we could possibly and then we even pulled the phone book to see if we were missing some and they didn't want to come forward. Quick question, I知 sorry, a lot of times when we get a soul bid or very few bid, you guys do follow-up work to find out what was going on. I知 pretty used to seeing that when we contacted so and so, they are too busy, it was not really their expert communities, blah blah whether blah. There isn't any kind of explanation as to why only two -- what happened to the other 14?
>> normally, Commissioner, our policy, office policy is that they only receive one bid, we will then survey the market, call around, as a matter of fact we have got an item coming up next week where we only received one, you will see that in the backup. We did have two bids on this one, relatively close together, so we felt that they were competitive. So we didn't go through the exercise of calling. When ms. Barr said there was waning or little interest in the time, I did call some bidders, tried to drum up some interest. That was one of the main reasons we extended to bid to give more time. Did call bidders to see if we could get them interested in the projects. One of the companies I called said at that time they weren't interested in bidding on this project. However it was relatively too small for them. Gave me the name of about six or seven other smaller gc's that do this type of project, we called them, sent them notices out. We couldn't seem to generate the interest.
>> the problem is that we have such a tight market. When you get so few people it's not like, I mean, if you don't have -- if companies aren't doing work, then they are bidding. But they are not bidding, then they get a couple of bids, here's kind of what the range is, we have accepted the fact. We know that we don't have a realistic budget to do this project. Period. It does make all of the sense in the world that cyd and I talked about yesterday, if 95% of people are publishing something, publish something because you really want competition. If I知 a g.c. I知 out here going I知 not going to go through all of that monkey business even though -- probably not get it. I mean, you know, give everybody the opportunity to do what we know we need to do. And unless somebody can give me a real good reason as to why we shouldn't do that. Then we ought to start it tomorrow. And I know -- we don't ever start things tomorrow. But we can certainly make it --
>> start tomorrow.
>> maybe the day after tomorrow.
>> that's what we have got here. We have got somebody that says hey I have really got a deal, we have also got somebody that got an e-mail, thank goodness for e-mail, because everybody knows what everybody says about everybody. Even in asia you know what it is. [laughter] and I can see where somebody would go well, I mean, I don't like that statement, I mean,, you know, because it's, you know, questioning my integrity and whatever. Nobody likes to do that. I知 sure that roger, you know, whoever -- that's not -- was not necessarily the intent of it. I don't know what kind of relationship that you have with them. I don't want to put words in your mouth.
>> I had a conversation with ms. Barr, based on that I sent roger an e-mail, roger responded, I asked roger if it were okay for me to share his response with ms. Barr, he said yes, I sent her an e-mail. This is what she's responding to. This e-mail that was in response to my e-mail that's a follow-up to our conversation.
>> there's no question --
>> the intention was for her to get it. While shh she disagrees, she does.
>> the proper process would have been for that e-mail to come to purchasing and let us put it out as a formal letter instead of e-mail because it does get sort of --
>> [multiple voices]
>> easy to be upset over it. That's sort of where we come in and sort of --
>> I can see where barr wants to challenge some of the things in here. No that's not what we want. Not right. Probably can justify it. The real deal here is that we have a project that's way under budget for what we have got to do. Now the question is do you -- do you have roger and leslie and everybody look at it, say okay well what do you do? Only eight beds as opposed to.
>> 24.
>> or 12. That's how you start cutting the cost down because otherwise like -- like hey, this thing is pretty skinny, right now. If you want to do this project, I mean, you know, we obviously are -- are, you know, probably got the best one. The best of the two that you have got. So heck it ain't hard to figure out. But we ought to either move forward in -- I don't know whether we negotiate with what -- with what you all do or how you do it. But it's -- it's everybody up here I think understands what happened with the thing and I think that it's -- it's legitimate that we need to make some changes.
>> before roger's e-mail and my e-mail to roger, I had told ms. Barr that I would let her know when this matter was on the court's agenda. We had kind of made it cheer that we would reject all bids because -- clear that we would reject all bids that it was twice the budget. It was clear the recommendation would be reject all bids. Ms. Barr asked for an opportunity to address the court. The e-mails kind of gave specific responses from staff so ms. Barr knew exactly what the county's position was. The bottom line, though, is that the -- of the two bids, the lowest one, the lower one was really twice the money that the county had set aside for the project.
>> yes, sir.
>> yes. That's what the -- what the thing is about.
>> yeah.
>> and her point is that historically we have been budgeting an amount of money and the bid will come in substantially higher and we had developed the practice and habit of rejecting all bids and so her position was that it left contractors at a disadvantage because they were putting together bids that would real -- that were realistic, they were coming in way over our budgeted amount.
>> sure.
>> one reason was that we never said what the budget was. Right? And our strategy has been if you don't know the -- our strategy has been why pay $3 million if we can get bids for two. But the effect has been just the opposite. We have had --
>> has continued to be because of the market. And I need to say that my recommendation to both mr. Gieselman and mr. Roger el khoury over a year ago was that we start publishing these and roger and I have gone back and forth. So I appreciate the court giving roger direction today that from now on he will give me a budget estimate so that we can publish. So this issue is over and resolved.
>> construction costs.
>> right.
>> and --
>> it will give project -- we will give roger an opportunity to address this matter. By the way roger had a medical appointment today that he did not need to miss.
>> right. We met with ms. Barr yesterday and discussed this. I told her that, you know, she had some very valid points, you know, our budget was done two and a half years ago, the market has just -- it's been a very unusual two years for the market. So -- so, you know, because it was so far over budget, we really need to reject these. There was no way to negotiate. We can't negotiate on a bid. One of the things that we might want to reconsider when we put this back out is a competitive sealed proposal so that we could negotiate. At that time. That might be an option for us, too. But ms. Barr has been a very responsible contractor. She's won many award over the 10, 13 years that I have been here. And, you know, I appreciate her input. We can always do a better job, it's always good to go back, but some things are out of our control and -- and to roger and his staff's credit, roger is the best f.m. Director that we could ask for and he has saved the taxpayers millions of dollars in the work that he does and so I respect him very much. For that work. And we'll just, you know, things are not always within our control and we just have to regroup and look at it and figure out how to go forward. I know that -- that juvenile court is very anxious to have this project done and so -- so I -- I think now that the -- the onus is on the Commissioners court to look at the budget again and come up with the money and that's not ever easy for you all.
>> well, that's the thing that, you know, if we learn nothing more from the cjc experience it would be that any time there's a lapse of time, you know, especially two years or, you know, two and a half years in this case, the prices are going to be, you know, way over because of the material costs. And so why -- maybe we can change our process as well that when time has lapsed like that, that we before we put it out on the street, that we go back and check ourselves to -- on the costs of materials and the availability of firms to bid on these projects. I don't know what exactly would be the proper thing here.
>> another week I think.
>> brought to our attention these factors. Time lapsed, material costs have increased and the -- I guess -- bidders, companies are busy doing other things. This may be just too small for them to deal with. At the same time I seem to feel like we need to get this project done and we don't need to be wasting time. [multiple voices]
>> any closing comments? Ms. Barr? This will be back on next week y'all. I do think we need to hear roger and take action, mull over it.
>> judge, there was one --
>> we want you to have your full say today.
>> I want to make some closing comments.
>> you do that then we will hear you, okay.
>> as you wish.
>> okay.
>> I think one of the things that concerns me about that e-mail going forward is if I wasn't here, what would you all have believed? If I didn't challenge every comment in there, what would you have believed. It concerns me, really does concern me. I -- I didn't start out for this to be a challenge but our bid was not realistic, there's two comments, and you were told that I didn't have this kind of experience. That didn't get verified with me. Why was that put in front of the court, you know, when you all listen to what -- that's all that you have to listen to. Really, that part just really bothers me.
>> I know that you put in for the bid out in bastrop, but have you completed a project of this type anywhere?
>> no, but it doesn't matter.
>> but that could be simply the simple basis for why roger's comment was that --
>> he can't do that. It's not a competitive sealed proposal. That cannot be part of the decision it's either low or not low.
>> no, no, no, this was -- this is an after the fact of what's going on. Not during the time of the thing --
>> Karen he had no way of knowing that. He didn't verify it with me. I never confirmed it one way or the other. Even if he wanted to -- I mean that's my point where did this information come from? And how many projects jail projects has roger completed? Is my other question.
>> del valle. [laughter] it's a big one.
>> but the thing is there are different perspectives which is why we want to give you an opportunity today. You are protecting the barr company, roger trying to protect the county. I never thought --
>> at the expense of the barr company. Basically the response is guys the reason this project is unrealistic is, one, the barr company's bid is unrealistic, and this person has never done this kind of work before. The reason it's overbudget is because the budget is unrealistic.
>> okay.
>> the budget is unrealistic.
>> any other closing comments?
>> no. Other than I think that -- I just want to give you a synopsis of what we have done. I really have a problem with that comment and my level of experience. We have been in construction for 25 years. But more importantly than that, my father was a contractor, I have three brothers that are contractors, it's in my blood, I was born into it. The company was started in 1981. We have completed over $500 million worth of cost management work. That means that when we work on a project and we do the probable cost estimates, you know, a denlt was made about roger has brought projects in, we were the architect on the precinct 4 project. My one of my sole responsibilities there was the cost management. We the barr company brought you that project substantially under budget. Not roger, the barr company. We have worked on Travis County design projects again where we brought in the project in substantially under budget. And we have also constructed other Travis County projects and are familiar with Travis County budgets and protocols. We just recently completed the Travis County precinct 3. And back in -- in another period, another lifetime, we worked on the metals package for the parking garage. We really do understand what it's like to work, the issue -- I知 going to just close with this. The issue of the fact that we had not -- it doesn't matter if you have completed it. It's -- if you are in construction, I mean that's what the -- that's what the bids that I got. That's what's in the documents. My experience with that level of work has nothing to do with it. I didn't add a factor for it. And a as a matter of fact, I told you this, judge, we wanted this project so bad that we talked to our electrical, mechanical and plumber. This is another comment that says, you know, that's in the e-mail, we ask them to give us their best price. And they did. The reason we were lower is because they gave us a lower price. I know that for a fact. Because we have good working relationships with them or else my bid would have been about 50, probably would have been 1.278. , you know, the second low bid. So I don't know what else question do. My problem is okay the county doesn't have the money. I understand that. Don't put it on me.
>> ms. Strickland? Anything that's not inflammatory?
>> I値l try. [laughter] what's inflammatory is in the eye of the beholder, judge, frankly. Travis County's previously contracted with the barr company for over four million worth of work as she's mentioned. You asked before how we valve date or review bid. In addition to what I mentioned previously about comparing the bid with the internal estimate, probably construction costs we also look for outside validation. In this case we looked to the national jail design expert hok's cost research on jail costs per bed, which you are familiar with from the del valle project. Del valle project cost per bed is $37,000 per bed for new construction. The bid on the table plus the package a material purchase contract already awarded for this project together would total $62,000 per bed. And that's just for a shell buildout. This is not a renovation. It is a shell buildout. There's extremely little demolition involved. It's taking down a few lights, a little bit of walls over in the dining area. So it's -- a big red flag when we have a national design expert recommending to the court an established cost factor that is significantly below a bid on the table and that cost is for new construction, which involves putting in structure from scratch, all mechanical, electrical, plumbing systems from scratch. That to us is how we look or -- a frame of reality. That is a frame of reality that does not -- cast any negative implication to the bid process itself by which that figure is presented other than it may have been uncompetitive for whatever reason, as I said before. If you were to award this bid, right now, you would be required to -- to provide additional funding of 650,220 just to cover the bid, plus an additional $120,000 for contingency for total additional funding of the project to $770,220. That was not something that facilities management was prepared to recommend at this time. We agree that it's necessary to review once and for all with the user department if there is any possible way to modify the project scope before recommending to move forward.
>> seems to me that we were dealing with one set of assumptions, then the bid comes in, higher than the assumptions justified. Now to be honest, I heard one side say the bid goes unrealistically high. I heard the other side say the budget is unrealistically low. The court is here in the middle trying to do the right thing as usual. We will next week. How is that? Thanks for coming down, we appreciate it.
>> thanks.
>> you won't be able to come back next week, but you will be here in spirit. Hopefully between now and then --
>> I already know what's going to happen. So ...
>> I think we also need to instruct cyd to send a letter again to all of the departments that they need to have purchasing deal with the communications that need to be -- to be carried out with bidders. I think a real neutral, professional, letter can be sent out by -- by the purchasing agent, but you are supposed to be neutral in all transactions, not take sides. And so I think we need to send that instruction out again.
>> thank you, Commissioner.
>> in closing I would like for facilities to bid the project out and see what kind of bids they get. Because I think our bid really is -- what it's going to cost you. You know for hok to come in and say that it's again it's a national design firm. It's not a construction firm. And if they would provide, you know, a probable cost estimate with the subcontractors in this area, looking at the project specifics, I disagree with leslie. It is a renovation project, when you are putting in mechanical, electrical, plumbing, there's a lot of things that have to be torn into and put back together as a result of that. So -- so, you know, I don't have any -- any -- I place no credibility in any company that's not in construction providing cost estimates. Thank you.
>> move that we recess until 1:30.
>> can we have a little bit more time, judge.
>> we have -- we have a long afternoon.
>> I understand that. But we have stuff to get done.
>> willing to stay after 5:00?
>> yeah. 1:45.
>> move to recess to 1:45. All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Commissioner Davis away.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, April 5, 2006 10:34 AM