The increase in cost and the delay in delivery of building materials may have put a slow-down on the Wellness Center expansion project in Eagle Grove, but that doesn’t mean it won’t still happen, according to City Administrator Bryce Davis.
In addition to the cost of steel and wood, Davis said HVAC prices also came in higher than originally anticipated.
But despite this, the project can still continue to move forward because the Wellness Center is a “design-build.”
“That allows the non-profit to design and build the project so essentially the difference with the City doing the project (as opposed to it being a non-profit owner) is that the City hires an architect. The architect and the City work out a plan. The architect details the plan sets, basically saying, ‘Here’s the scope of the work, you tell us how you’re going to do it and then we’ll verify it,’” explained Davis.
This allows contractors to bid on how they read the plans and on how they plan to accomplish the intended design. You can not alter the plans until you accept the bid. What that means is if it comes in at a higher amount of the original budget, legally, you have to accept the bid, then work with contractor to cheapen the project. The contractor could say, “No, you already accepted the bid.”
“So you have to reject the bids, work with the architect, pay them to cheapen the project up, and go back out to bid and see where your numbers fall this time,” explained Davis.
How the nonprofit world works, and the way the Wellness Center project is being approached, is they can go to a contractor who then hires an architect and they all work together to design and build something based on market prices, material lead times, and subcontractor availability.
“Where we’re at in the (building) process is essentially the HVAC was over bid so we’re redoing the numbers, plumbing was overbid so we’ve got those new numbers in line, the future market on both steel and lumber are both coming down drastically, which typically doesn’t hit the local marketplace until about a month or two after, so hopefully they’ll stay down,” said Davis.
He does recognize, however, that with Hurricane Ida, the cost of sheetrock could go up drastically. The fire in California could also alter prices. Refineries shut down so gas, oil, and diesel could go up which makes shipping costs go up…
“You just never know where the markets are going to play,” he said.
But for right now, he believes things are showing good signs and that they will be signing construction contracts very soon. The next step is to go through proceedings to officially acquire the property from Rotary and make sure the contracts are acceptable to them because it’s their building.”
“The markets are coming in line. The contractors are in line, so theoretically the (work) could start this fall. We just need to firm up a few more items,” said Davis.
