The City of Plymouth is moving ahead with efforts to choose a construction contractor for its 9.8-million-dollar Wastewater Treatment Plant improvement project. The city has decided to use a Guaranteed Savings Contract for the project, which allows the city to choose a contractor based on qualifications, rather than who puts in the lowest bid.
Plymouth utility superintendent Donnie Davidson has said the system will give the city some additional oversight over contractors, reducing the likelihood of change orders. Additionally, the contractor’s profit margin will be pre-determined.
At this point, the city has published a notice with a request for qualifications. The Plymouth Board of Works Monday approved the creation of a committee to review the proposals and make a recommendation to the board. That committee consists of Davidson, along with Board of Works members Mike Delp and Don Ecker Jr.
Davidson explained to the board how this process will work. “The RFQ process is a request for qualifications of the contractor based upon – I think it’s a series of six areas of criteria,” he said. “They are limited to a certain amount of pages on which they can present their qualifications. The committee members will then use a grading system which is standardized and weighted so that one person can’t basically control the whole selection process.”
He says the results are added up, and the most qualified contractor wins, “At that point, you would negotiate with that particular contractor. You would not be locked in to going with that contractor, unless you can negotiate services and a price that will ultimately do that. If we choose to throw that contractor out, we would drop to the next potential highest score.”
Davidson added that the proposals are due January 25. Then, the committee members will have two weeks to review them, before making a recommendation to the full Board of Works on February 8.
