No Bidding for Lake Delton Repair

Good idea?

Officials in this resort community on Monday approved forgoing a bidding process so cleanup and restoration of Lake Delton can continue without delay, and also began the task of getting back in the National Flood Insurance Program.

About 50 area business and homeowners attended the 20-minute meeting where the Village Board announced the state Department of Transportation will handle repairs to the breached area of the lake and Highway A, with the goal of restoring the lake by the spring. The village is working to create a diversion channel in the lake to direct water to its intended outlet at the dam, which should be completed this week.

It would take a couple of weeks to put an emergency bidding process together.  Would that really prevent a Spring date?

1. There is nothing that I love hearing from my customers than “we aren’t going to bid this out”

   I know better than to screw my customers, but I also don’t get down and dirty when I don’t have to.

   With the slow-down in the construction market I’m sure there are PLENTY of contractors who’d be willing to quickly put together a good bid package.

   But why go out to bid when its taxpayer money.  F the taxpayer, Lets pay full boat cause we think we have an excuse.

   Oh, and I drove over the MILLION dollar crossover on i-94 last Friday… I can’t believe a couple hundred yards of gravel and asphalt some plastic center markers and some line paint costs a MILLION dollars.  Un-believable.

   Posted by on June 23, 2008 at 2228 hrs




2. Ideally it should be a two part project: emergency repairs followed by a permanent solution.  Not bidding the emergency repairs is acceptable.  I am sceptical that any permanent plan has been developed that actually takes into consideration the geologic and hyrologic conditions at the site.

   You’re forgetting, xxpilot, the wages paid for working nights on the weekend on a state road project.  I’ll see the crossover first hand tomorrow.

   Posted by on June 23, 2008 at 2254 hrs




3. can’t be hypocrites here!!

   Where was all the fuss over Halliburton’s numerous no bid contracts??

   Posted by on June 24, 2008 at 0800 hrs




4. Post #3 and we’re back to Bush-bashing.  As usual.

   I agree with BVBigBro - from a practical standpoint, it would be difficult to hard bid the emergency repairs portion of the work without spending time on scope and design.

   Someone should properly design a permanent repair in the interim, on which I’m sure multiple qualified contractors would be willing to bid.

   Posted by on June 24, 2008 at 0841 hrs




5. When you look at this timeline the bid process is not a huge factor, with a project this big I would be a little concerned about who makes the decision to award the contract, will their be any pre-qualification? I work in public construction and realize low bid is not a perfect system, but it does eliminate a lot of sleazy stuff and is the best way to go in an imperfect system.

   Posted by on June 24, 2008 at 1003 hrs




6. You’re forgetting, xxpilot, the wages paid for working nights on the weekend on a state road project.  I’ll see the crossover first hand tomorrow.

   I had thought about that, and also considered that when i have clients that want to be moved to the front of my backlog and start immediately they pay a huge premium too.  But I am aware that a great deal of road work is always done at night, so that isn’t so unusual and wouldn’t represent a premium over typical roadwork.  I also read that one of the reasons that the contractor was selected was because they could start “right away”.  Well if they could start right away, then I would think less likely that they would have justification to tack a large premium on for the quick start.  And finally, the crossover, I believe, was started on a monday or tuesday and finished and opened at 2:15 pm last thursday afternoon so there wasn’t any weekend premium to be in consideration.

   Not withstanding all of that, I drove over the crossover and literally thought “a million dollars”?!?!?  I’ll admit I’m not a construction expert, but I am pretty well versed in construction having worked construction in college and my consulting firm deals with these exact type of projects every day.  If they weren’t busy with other things, I’ve almost wanted one of my engineers to calculate what the cost would be for a project like that.  We do that type of cost analysis for clients every day.  Anyway… I guess what I’m saying is I’m not an engineer but my knowledge of that type of work definitely exceeds a lay persons.  And I think a million is STEEP for that project.

   I’ll be interested to hear your initial reaction after you drive over it.

   I also understand the job was “time and materials” but I know full well that “hourly rates” are very negotiable and the markup on materials is very negotiable also.  With a no bid situation I bet the ‘time’ cost is fat and markup on materials is damn healthy too. 

   But hey.. its not the governments money, so why would they care.  And we have guys on this board who are really to call a million dollars “peanuts” and “nothing” when they heard the cost.  eesh..

   Posted by on June 24, 2008 at 1012 hrs




7. Well sorry i dont live in that country you are talking about so dont know much about it.But one thing I want to say is a permanent repair should be done in the interim, so that contractors would be interseted to bid.

   Posted by Fotobuch on June 24, 2008 at 1343 hrs




8. Correct me if I am wrong (And I know I am right, so please don’t bother) But the DOT is broke remember? So unless WISDOT is planning on sub-contracting the work out to the Teachers and/or The Indians, this is work that should NOT be getting done.

   I am sympathetic to the people of Lake Delton, I really Am, however they, and many other communities should be standing up to the Doyle and the Legislature and saying Thanks but no thanks, because the the agency assigned to do the work is broke.

   It sickens me to no end that in we Wisconsinites will get to pay for flood damage with a BIG FAT Tax hike because our elected officials are MORONS!!

   Posted by on June 24, 2008 at 1716 hrs




9. I was just kidding about the overtime, xxpilot.  They could not possibly have spent anywhere near a million on the crossover.  Couldn’t have spent half that actually.

   Time and materials should always be done with unit costs.

   Posted by on June 24, 2008 at 1954 hrs




10. Thanks for the suggestion
    sikiş

    Posted by on June 27, 2008 at 0626 hrs