Cape Informer

In response to City must face utility problems.

Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 13:28:51
From: “Lloyd Duhon” gmail com>
To: “Tom Hayden” news-press com>
Subject: Answer to Wednesday’s Editorial

In your editorial on Wednesday the 7th, you stated that the Cape needed to “Face Utility Problems”. I would present to you that this is exactly what the city has done.

The utility construction projects from the early 90s resulted in a gigantic mess. Fourteen square miles of the city was torn up at the same time. The City was in a legal mess. We paid millions of dollars to settle lawsuits. Residents were understandably upset by the conditions they were forced to live under.

The City faced that complex series of problems. They designed a new proposal to fix the many problems that were uncovered from the first project. They broke the areas into smaller groups. Areas that could be finished relatively quickly and with relatively fewer interruptions for the residents. They made requirements for customer support. They made requirements for engineering that would ensure the highest quality product. They made requirements for worker safety. They made requirements that ensured that subcontractors would be able to effectively perform the work that was required. In all of this they “Faced Utility Problems”.

They also found a different model for construction. The method known as Construction Manager at Risk. Our City leaders did not “make it up” or attempt some process that no one had heard of The rules were not invented as we went along. Instead, The City followed the lead of places like the American Institute of Architects who in their “CM@Risk Compendium” make many positive assertions about the process. These assertions include “Transparency is enhanced, because all costs and fees are in the open, which diminishes adversarial relationships between components working on the project, while at the same time eliminating bid shopping.” This certainly is the case in our utility projects. As a resident I requested access to all of this cost information and I was provided that access. It was a massive volume with every single cost for every single aspect of the project.

The AIA is not the only entity supporting CM@Risk. In fact, Florida has a wide number of projects undertaken by government entities which have utilized the process. Florida’s Department of Transportation provides information that the Florida Legislature approved trial
projects with CM@Risk as early as 1996. The FDOT has guidelines by which an entity should evaluate the use of CM@Risk.

• Building type projects where construction methods and specifications vary between professional groups (i.e., engineer/architect and constructions trades).
• Innovative funding scenarios, where multiple owners may dictate final project criteria.
• Projects where limiting budgets threaten the delivery of the project and where CM alternative can help maintain costs.
• Other projects, where construction input is required during early phases of design.

Each of the above criteria matches the situation in the City of Cape Coral. We require different professional groups to perform the construction and the planning. We have a wide variety of property owners responsible for funding their portion of the project. Our budget is definitely limited by the incomes of the people affected. It is also very much a requirement that early phases have great planning in place, otherwise we are faced with serious dilemmas, such as we
found in the early 90s.

In addition, many other Florida agencies have moved forward with CM@Risk projects. The City of Palm Coast used the method to construct their City Hall. Hernando County hired one Construction Manager for a number of new School buildings. Miami and Polk County both used the method to complete Fire and EMS buildings.

In the case of School construction, the Florida Statutes have already been updated to include the Construction Manager at Risk in statute “235.211 Educational facilities contracting and construction techniques. ” In this particular portion of State Statute it clearly states that you must select the CM@Risk using a competitive process, which our city did. After this you can retain this Construction Manager to complete projects with subcontractors as long as the
subcontractor process follows the same competitive bidding rules, which MWH has done faithfully since the inception of the UEP.

If we’re following the rules as laid out in other more recently updated State Statutes, why would we not seek to update the generic statute that is the defining statute by which all competitive
negotiation occurs? It would seem the prudent thing to do.

[Where: 33990]
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