steele memorial proposals to be reviewed
By Steve Herring
Published in News on July 21, 2013 1:50 AM
The Wayne County Facilities Committee Tuesday morning is expected to name its choice of a design/build team to construct the new Steele Memorial Library in Mount Olive. The final decision rests with Wayne County commissioners.
The committee, made up of Commissioners Ray Mayo, who also serves as chairman, Wayne Aycock and Steve Keen, will met at 8 a.m. in the commissioners' meeting room on the fourth floor of the county courthouse annex to hear presentations and to review the five teams in consideration. The meeting is open to the public.
The committee will submit its recommendation to the full board when it meets Aug. 6.
The county received seven responses to the request for qualifications for the project. County Manager Lee Smith and county staff reviewed the submissions and recommended five be sent on to the Facilities Committee.
Those are: MHA Works of Greenville/TA Loving of Goldsboro; Hite Associates of Greenville/Bordeaux Construction Co. of Durham; Brennan Architects of Columbia, S.C./Hudson Brothers of Greenville; Dunn & Dalton of Kinston/Daniels & Daniels of Goldsboro; and Smith Engineering & Design of Goldsboro/Jackson Builders of Goldsboro.
Also submitting responses were SFL+A Architects of Fayetteville/Barnhill Contracting of Raleigh and Darden J. Eure III & Associates of New Bern/Group III Mgt., Inc.
The responses are not bids -- the teams were asked to include a team profile, their experience, how the team would approach the job and its understanding of the project.
In design/build, an architect and general contractor form a team, which works under one contract with the project owner, in this case the county, to provide both design and construction services.
The teams will be evaluated on a 100-point scale.
The worksheet to be used includes awards points for the team's approach to a project of this nature; familiarity with local conditions; adequacy of proposed staff resources; team's approach to value engineering and options for preserving the functionality of the building; overall performance on past projects; prior experience over the past eight years; team's demonstrated ability to complete tasks on time; approach to the work to be done; and quality, clarity and completeness of presentation.
A deadline has not been set as to when the library project might get under way. However, a completion time of 10 months or less is favored because of space limitation at the existing library on Chestnut Street.
The library was included in the board's recently adopted capital improvement plan for 2013-14 at an estimated cost of $3.5 million. However, projects costs are estimated at $120 per square foot for a total of $2,426,160.
The project will renovate the former Belk department store building on West Main Street in Mount Olive to house the library. The county purchased the building in November 2008 for $400,000 from Mount Olive College.
The Steele Memorial Library Steering Committee spearheaded a grassroots fundraiser that raised more than $350,000 to pay for the design work to renovate the 20,218-square-foot building to house the library.