Groundbreaking for a new Bartholomew County Highway Department garage could take place as early as March of next year.
Plans call for construction to start no later than May 1, but the Bartholomew County commissioners are trying to move the schedule up by two to three months.
If that happens, it would allow the 22-employee highway department to move into a new building east of Petersville by the end of next year, commissioners chairman Larry Kleinhenz said.
The Bartholomew County Council approved financing up to $6 million in bonds to build the new garage on an 11.25-acre farm site off East 25th Street, next to the Clay Township Fire Department. It will replace the 66-year-old current facility at State Street and Gladstone Avenue described in a 2017 structural assessment as functionally obsolete.
DLZ Indiana Inc., an engineering and architectural firm, received two of three garage-related contracts approved by the commissioners Monday.
One contract will pay the Indianapolis-based firm $315,000 for architectural services, while the other will provide DLZ a maximum $17,400 for surveying work.
In this case, architectural services refers to creating schematics for design development and construction documents, as well as overseeing bidding and construction phases of the project, commissioner Rick Flohr said.
The third contract approved Monday that deals with a new highway garage will pay Taylor Bros. Construction Co. $237,000 for construction management services.
During the design phase, the main task undertaken by Taylor Bros. will be monitoring budgets, company president David Doup said.
But before reaching the bidding phase, his staff will break down various components of the project into several individual undertakings, Doup said.
By allowing several smaller companies to bid on each undertaking, overall construction costs can be reduced significantly, Kleinhenz said.
Although this isn’t the traditional approach where one large construction firm hires subcontractors after receiving the bid, it was been done before in Columbus.
Such an approach was successfully utilized in the 2010-2011 construction of Mill Race Center, as well as in developing the Bartholomew County Landfill, the commissioners said.
In the case of the landfill, hiring multiple companies likely resulted in about $1 million in development savings over the past eight years, Kleinhenz said.
As an example of potential savings, hiring one firm to focus solely on site excavation for the new highway garage might save about $150,000, the commissioners chairman said.
But Taylor Bros. has a far more complex responsibility than merely finding the lowest costs, Doup said.
Instead, its goal will be to find a balance between the project’s scope, cost and quality that ultimately gives taxpayers lower long-term operating costs, as well as short-term savings on construction, he said.
If the county had attempted to find that type of balance in constructing the Bartholomew County Jail, “we would have saved a huge amount of money that we are still paying today,” Kleinhenz said.
Besides cost-efficiency, the hiring of several firms to build the new highway garage also gives the county security, commissioner Rick Flohr said.
If one of many hired firms can’t finish the work, they can be replaced with less difficulty than a single firm placed in charge of all construction, Kleinhenz said.
When asked by audience member Mike Lovelace why both DLZ and Taylor Bros. were provided no-bid contracts, commissioner Carl Lienhoop said DLZ has a five-year history with the garage project. In addition, the price the firm is charging for architectural services is on the low end of what other firms are likely to bid, Kleinhenz said.
The company has also gained a unique expertise with its management services work on the construction of Mill Race Center that other firms don’t have, Kleinhenz said.
State laws regarding hiring a firm for professional services don’t have the same requirements for soliciting competitive bids as other types of contracted work, the commissioners chairman said.
By accepting the management services contract, Taylor Bros. has made itself ineligible to bid on the actual construction, Lienhoop said.
In their fourth and final action Monday regarding the highway garage, the commissioners gave their blessing for the City of Columbus to apply for a grant that deals with the current highway garage at 2452 State St., rather than the future facility.
The city, which has expressed interest in purchasing the property, is seeking outside funding to pay for a two-phase study to determine whether there might be contamination issues within the existing garage, county attorney Grant Tucker said.
While the commissioners must have such a study completed before selling the property, county taxpayers will be spared the cost if the city is successful in obtaining the grant, Tucker said.
In early July, Kleinhenz said the city is considering the property for several possible uses, including a bus terminal or a storage facility.
