Wilmette has put off plans to replace the roof on village hall, initially planned for May and June, in order to seek new bids that might be less expensive than the $606,758 bid first recommended by its engineering and public works staff.
The work can still be done in the fall, which is when the village plans to replace the hall’s rooftop air conditioning chiller unit, department director Brigitte Berger told Trustee Julie Wolf at the board’s April 24 meeting, when the delay was announced.
More Top Picks Best Mountain Bike Shoes For Wide Feet
The delay was prompted by concerns from Trustee Ted McKenna, who wanted administrators to try to get a lower price than the one Wilmette procured by going through U.S. Communities, a national nonprofit purchasing cooperative, Village Manager Tim Frenzer said.
McKenna said this week that the U.S. Communities program is efficient, “but it doesn’t always yield the lowest cost.”
“I thought we could potentially benefit from a second inexpensive process,” he said.
Frenzer said his staff could review the project’s design services and look at creating a new request for proposal for the job of replacing the village hall roof, the base of which was built in 1973, and last underwent significant rehabbing about 20 years ago, according to Berger’s report to the board.
This year’s plan is to rip off the existing roof and replace it, which will also involve dealing with asbestos materials in a separate project, Berger said.
Frenzer said the original decision to try the U.S. Communities group’s bidding process was an attempt to streamline efforts for the village. According to Berger’s report, U.S. Communities offered a joint purchasing possibility that would cut administrative costs connected to competitive bidding.
The cooperative currently uses the Ohio-based Garland Roof Company for roof contracting services for municipalities using the cooperative, and the original recommendation would have required Garland to provide design and management for the project, it said. Garland would have also provided materials, and would complete the project by using a local contractor chosen through a bidding process, it said.
In the report, Berger stated that Garland recommended using Waukegan Roofing Co., one of four local contractors whose bids were opened March 30; the bid was below the $630,000 allotted for the project in the 2017 budget, she said.
She said April 27 that although the process saves time for village staff, because they don’t have to handle the project’s design and engineering, having those handled by Garland means there could be extra costs involved in the U.S. Communities process.
“I think we got a fair price. Did we get the best price? I don’t know. We don’t know how much of a premium we’re paying for those services. Since this is the first time we’ve tried this process, checking what we could get with a more traditional RFP process means we’d have that information going forward,” she said.
Attempting to get a lower price won’t prove to be a fatal delay to the project, Frenzer said: “We don’t have to do the work in the spring. It’s not a time-sensitive project.”
Berger said that Garland’s offer is good “almost through to the end of the year,” which means that the village could still go with that one, if a more traditional bid doesn’t result in more savings.
The work can be done in conjunction with the replacement of the village hall HVAC chiller unit, Berger said. That was already scheduled for November, at a cost of $130,500, according to information in the board packet.
Twitter: @pioneer_kathy