A couple of change orders – including a fairly substantial one – for unforeseen sewer pipe rehabilitation work were approved by the Warsaw Board of Public Works and Safety Friday.
The first change order presented by city engineer James Emans, on behalf of Utility Superintendent Brian Davison, was for $389,718.43 from Layne Inliner LLC.
“The change order changes the contract amount for what we’re identifying as the small diameter No. 1 contract,” Emans said. “There had been a change order on this project prior.”
Emans said when the city bid the three sewer pipe lining contracts, all being funded by the State Revolving Fund, a couple of years ago, the prices came in “significantly lower” than the city had funds available.
“So we put out an additional fourth contract. And we worked with State Revolving Fund, that organization, and they allowed us to have an undistributed change order of 20%. From a dollar standpoint, the funds were available. So our engineers, we change ordered this contract,” Emans said.
He said there was more than enough work to do so the contract was “change ordered” by that 20% and they’ve been working with the contractors to spend that 20%.
“This change order that’s in front of you currently is unforeseen,” Emans said. “When we got into some of the pipe, the lining company said they couldn’t put a lining in the pipe until somebody goes in and fixes this problem. These were unforeseen costs.”
The change order will bring the overall contract amount up to 32% over the awarded amount, he said. Of that, 12% is documented as “unforeseen activities.”
Emans said it was vetted with the SRF funding agency and it approved the work if the Board of Works approves the change order.
“From a State Board of Accounts standpoint, we’ve got documentation to show we hadn’t foreseen this work. So we’re over the 20% limit, but our understanding of the statute is as long as we can document why we saw this as unforeseen, those dollars are pulled away from that 20% cap,” Emans said.
“Just to be clear, that first 20% was additional work, not additional costs? It was more work that could be done?” asked city attorney Scott Reust.
Emans replied, “Because we had the funds available and the prices that came in.”
Emans said the city requested a $10 million bond from SRF and the prices came in so low, the city was able to up three of the four contracts by the 20% and still be under the $10 million the city asked for.
“The utility wants to utilize those funds because they are cost-effective loans and we had like $15 million worth of repairs to do that we had identified in our research. That additional work was just going to have to happen under regular maintenance activities across time,” Emans said.
“So we wanted to capitalize the work we knew we had to do within this bond. And that’s where the 20% came from to begin with.”
Then the contractor told the city it couldn’t line some of the pipes until the city did some other work first and that’s where the $389,718.43 came from.
Board members Jeff Grose and George Clemens approved the change order. Mayor Joe Thallemer was absent from Friday’s meeting.
The next change order was for $27,930 from Layne Inliner LLC and was a “similar contract,” according to Emans. It was for the No. 3 large diameter pipes.
“The dollar amounts on this one, again, were unforeseen. This contract is going to go over by approximately 1%. The change order amount that is here is for unforeseen activities,” he said.
Emans said the consultants the city is working with can document with paperwork that it was unforeseen. It also was vetted through SRF.
The change order was approved.
The third and last change order was to modify time because of some of the extra work that is being done. He asked it be tabled until the next Board of Works meeting because the contractor – Insituform Technologies USA LLC – failed to supply the right paperwork.
