"Charleston, W.Va., airport board ponders rebid of runway project"

Thursday, August 5, 2004

Charleston, W.Va., airport board ponders rebid of runway project
The Charleston (WV) Gazette


Some of Yeager Airport's biggest supporters say a multimillion-dollar
project to extend a safety area beyond the runway should be rebid. 

Out of six bidders, Mountaineer Grading of Elkview offered the lowest
bid for the project, which involves adding 370 feet of fill material to
the runway safety area to make it level with the existing runway. 

Mountaineer Grading's $9.7 million bid was $1.7 million more than the
engineer's estimate. The highest bid was $14.6 million from Bizzack
Construction of Frankfort, Ky. 

Kanawha County Commission President Kent Carper said the bids are too
high and was concerned that the process didn't include a
responsible-bidder prescreening.

Airport Director Rick Atkinson doesn't have a vote on the airport's
governing board but said if he did, he would probably vote to rebid the
project. 

"It's much higher than what the estimate was," he said. "When you tell
contractors to go back and sharpen their pencils, you get a better
product." 

The airport board's construction committee voted 2-2 on Monday to
recommend the bid be awarded to Mountaineer. The entire board will
decide Friday whether it wants to award the bid to Mountaineer. 

Committee chairman Bill Forbes said the group did discuss throwing out
the bids. 

"You get into a lot of problems when you have to cancel the bids," he
said. 

Tom Hypes, an estimator at Mountaineer Grading, said if the board votes
to rebid the project, the company would possibly file a lawsuit, based
on the fair-bidding law passed by the Legislature in the spring. 

Mountaineer Grading owner Les Putillion said his company was told the
project's budget was $8 million to $10 million. The money for this
project is coming from a $3.9 million grant from the Federal Aviation
Administration and $5.3 million in passenger facility charges. 

The construction committee also interviewed the three low bidders during
its Monday meeting. 

"Our question would be, if the project was over budget, why would you go
through the interview process if you didn't have the money," Putillion
asked. "And clearly, why would you let the construction committee vote?"


The company can offer some slight changes to the job that make it easier
and cheaper that weren't reflected in its initial bid, Hypes said. These
changes could bring the price down to $9.2 million. 

Carper, who often agrees with Atkinson on airport issues, said he based
his opinion about rebidding the project on two recent public projects,
the Ned Chilton 911 Center construction and Kanawha County Courthouse
renovations. 

In both cases, the bids came in over estimate, were rejected and rebid. 

"On the second round of bidding, the prices were in line and taxpayers
saved more than $3 million in construction costs," he wrote in a letter
to Ed Hill, chairman of the airport's governing board. 

If the board does vote to rebid the project, construction could be
delayed by at least 30 to 45 days, Atkinson said. He had expected the
project to begin in the middle of the month and take about a year. 

Carper also said he was concerned that the board didn't prescreen for
responsible bidders, a process done before bids are open to objectively
critique companies that are vying for a contract. 

The airport board adopted 18 points, including experience and past
performance, and compliance with workers' compensation, unemployment and
wage rate laws, to determine if a bidder is responsible. 

Atkinson said this is the first contract that has had the
responsible-bidder requirements. Only one of the six bidders submitted
the responsible-bidder information. 

"To do a responsible-bidder determination, you have to do it before you
open up bids. I think it's probably not good public policy after you
open up bids," Atkinson said. 

"In the future, we will have a questionnaire designed to have an
objective criteria to determine who is a responsible bidder," he said.


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