Title
Bid Award - Loblolly Woods Boardwalk Reconstruction (B)
This item is a request for the City Commission to authorize the bid award to Industrial Maintenance Services, Inc. DBA IMS Contracting, Inc. for the reconstruction of the boardwalk at Loblolly Woods Nature Park, located at approximately 2710 NW 8th Avenue.
Explanation
The boardwalk at Loblolly Woods Nature Park, spanning from NW 8th Avenue approximately 1400 feet north, has been closed since August 2020. Severe wood rot created a safety hazard that was beyond the capacity of City staff to repair.
In October of 2020 the Nature Operations Division reached out to Wharton-Smith, Inc., one of the City’s approved construction management firms for small projects (under $2M), to bid out the work needed to repair the Loblolly Woods Nature Park boardwalk and provide the City with a guaranteed maximum price (GMP) proposal. Wharton-Smith, Inc. has experience facilitating boardwalk projects for the City of Gainesville (Sweetwater Wetlands Park), Volusia County (Smyrna Dunes Park), the City of Clearwater (Crest Lake Park) and many others.
The GMP that Wharton-Smith, Inc. submitted to the City far exceeded the available funds within the Nature Operations Division’s Boardwalk Replacement CIP fund, which was the anticipated funding source for this project. The Wild Spaces & Public Places (WSPP) program was brought into the discussion in December 2020 as a possible supplemental funding source for the project.
Upon review of the GMP, WSPP staff noted that Wharton-Smith’s markup for staffing, overhead and profit was a significant portion of the cost of the work. After internal discussions and evaluation of paving a trail in lieu of the boardwalk reconstruction, it was determined that the best path forward for the project would be to bid out the boardwalk work as a low bid procurement ITB through centralized City of Gainesville Procurement Staff and supervise the project in-house.
On May 12, 202...
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