A new main in Perry’s sanitary sewer system will be laid starting this week along 16th Street/K Avenue southward from the Iowa Highway 141 bypass, bringing sewer service to two properties recently annexed by the city and to four others, including the Dallas County Conservation Board’s Forest Park Museum, that lie outside the city limits.
The contract for the $457,255 construction project was awarded Oct. 2 by the Perry City Council to EJM Pipe Services Inc. of Circle Pines, Minn. The engineer’s estimate for the base bid of the project was $315,868, and seven bids for the job were received in mid-August, with EJM Pipe’s — the lowest bid — exceeding the engineer’s estimate by $141,387.
Waukee-based Raccoon Valley Contractors was the highest bidder at $1.15 million.
At the Oct. 2 meeting, the council asked Matt Ferrier of Bolton and Menk, the city’s engineering consultant, about the basis for the original cost estimate.
“Our estimate was put together on this project a little over a year ago,” Ferrier said, “at the start of fall last year. At the time we had talked to local contractors who were looking for work and used that to help establish a baseline for what we thought it would be. Unfortunately, we did not get bids from any of those guys.”
In spite of the high price, Perry City Administrator Sven Peterson encouraged the council to move forward with the work so that the city can fulfill an agreement made with one of the property owners during the 2015 annexation process that brought land for the Perry Industrial Park and the three wind turbines inside the city limits.
“At the last meeting, we decided not to take any action and to talk to that homeowner that we’re trying to get service to,” Peterson said. “It turns out they have their septic system already removed and are moving on with construction, hoping to be in the house January or February, some time in there. So it is prudent for us to get this project done.”
Ferrier predicted in October a mid-November completion date, but delays have pushed back the timeline.
“They would shoot to be done, I would say, probably by the second week of November,” he said. “They would be looking to get out of there because at that point it’s going to be freezing, and you’re going to have a hard time getting a backhoe connection, so they’re going to want to move pretty quickly.”
A trench 30 feet deep will be dug at the north end of the sewer line, near the bypass, Ferrier said.
“What they’re looking to do is come in and bore the majority of it and expose that connection point and make that connection,” he said. “But that also means they have two fairly deep bore pits.”
Peterson and Ferrier both said some of the cost overrun could possibly be made up in change orders once the contract is in place.
“There is probably some change ordering that could be done to get that price closer,” Peterson said. “So I think we’re going to be okay there.”
“The contractor has had really, really good reviews from everybody I’ve talked to about it,” Ferrier said. “We have had some conversations just updating him on where the project is at here, and I am fairly confident we can have some conversations with him and find some savings in the project.”
The Perry City Council also took action in October on another improvement project, this one in the works for more than two years. The council accepted a $753,500 bid from Elder Corp. of Des Moines for replacement of the Willis Avenue bridge over Frog Creek.
The Iowa Department of Transportation, which also approved the Elder Corp. bid, will carry 50 percent of the cost of the bridge replacement, with the city of Perry matching the state funds.
The bridge on Willis Avenue between West Fourth and West Fifth streets is not structurally sound enough to permit standard truck traffic without strict weight limits. Instead of a new bridge, a Contec culvert will replace the current structure, according to Ferrier.
“It doesn’t have a structure in the bottom,” he said. “It sets on footings and has free-flowing water through the center. We couldn’t have a bottom because there’s sanitary sewer there, there’s a water main there and there’s a lime line from the water plant, so we can’t put a box culvert in the creek.” ”
The council asked Ferrier questions about the new structure’s appearance, pedestrian access and safety.
The Contech replacement “looks kind of like a culvert but not a full-blown culvert that you normally see,” Ferrier said. “The way this thing looks when you actually do drive up to it, it will not have the feel of a bridge. It will look like you’re just going to keep driving down the road. You won’t even know it’s there. You’ll have sidewalks through it and fencing on the outside because of the guardrail over the creek for pedestrians, but it will be just like an open roadway section.”
Peterson said the city’s share of the replacement project will be borrowed from the Road Use Tax Fund and repaid with local option sales tax funds.
[…] city’s engineering consultant, Matt Ferrier of Bolton and Menk, originally predicted a mid-November finish, but work on the project did not begin until […]