Jail contract approved
By Steve Herring
Published in News on July 8, 2015 1:46 PM
Wayne County commissioners Tuesday unanimously approved awarding a $9,407,275 contract to Daniels and Daniels Construction Co. to build the Sheriff Carey A. Winders Detention Center.
The board also scheduled a groundbreaking ceremony for Friday, July 17, at 10 a.m. Construction is expected to take about a year.
The approximately 38,500-square-feet single-story jail, that will house 221 inmates, will be built on the county-owned former Masons department store property at 1069 N. William St.
The base bid was $9.3 million and six alternates added $74,000, said Dan Mace with Mosely Architects, the company that designed the building.
Allowance and alternates brought the original total bid to $9,491,600, he said.
However, he said that "value engineering" by working with Daniels and Daniels had cut $84,325 from the project for a net contract 0f $9,407,275.
Those deductions are:
* $38,560 reduction in which a subcontractor was able to trim its bid down.
* $25,800 abatement credit for hazardous materials abatement that will not have to be done.
* $11,240 reduction by using a Samsung video management system.
* $9,025 reduction by use an analog voice recording system instead of a digital system.
Commissioner Bill Pate said that in the "great scheme of things" that $9,000 for recording equipment was not that much.
"Would digital be better than analog?" Pate said.
The project will include digital video recording, but analog voice recording remains common, Mace said.
"If we identify more (savings), we can implement those as deductive change orders," he said. "Understand, too, that the allowances that are in the project -- you hope that you don't spend any of it."
The allowances include:
* $5,000 for interior signs.
* $90,000 for additional excavation, off-site disposal and backfill.
* $2,600 for additional excavation in trenches, off-site disposal and backfill.
* $20,000 additional utility relocation.
"Those allowance numbers are just placeholders," Mace said. "If you don't spend it, it comes back to you at the end. It is kind of there as a contingency for those allowances."
The alternates, or additions include $45,000 for Tyco Raven institutional sprinkler heads; $5,000 for a two-year detention lock maintenance agreement; $9,000 for an extended two-year warranty for the security control systems; and $15,000 for a Exacq network video system.
Commissioner Joe Daughtery questioned why the recommendation was for a two-year detention lock maintenance agreement instead of five years.
The five-year agreement would cost $90,000, Mace said.
"We just felt like that was an exorbitant amount for five years," Mace said.
The same is true for the warranty for the security control systems, County Manager George Wood said.
"We felt like the two-year warranties on both of those was a nominal cost," Mace said. "One was $9,000. One was $5,000. The county would be well served to extend those warranties out a couple of years."
Daughtery asked if the cost of demolition was included. It is, Mace said.
"The only thing that we are removing out of the contract right now is the hazardous abatement that the county is currently under way with," Mace said. "That is already being done outside of the contract with Daniels and Daniels. They had it in the bid, but we are pulling that out."
Wood said that the hazardous abatement work should be completed this week.
What can be used of that debris, as well as when the building is demolished, will be ground up and used for fill, Mace said.
There already is some material on site from other structures the county has demolished, Wood said.
Daughtery also wanted to know if the contract included equipment for video conferencing.
Mace said he thought Daughtery was talking about video visitation and that is included in the contract.
"I thought we were attempting to do something where you actually could arraign people there," Daughtery said.
The capability is there, but not the tie back to the court system, Mace said.
The inmates would be arraigned at the courthouse and then taken to the jail, Daughtery said.
The jail and courthouse systems are similar and since the capability is there video arraignment could be added later, Mace said.
Commissioner Ray Mayo said that maybe the better question is what is not included in the contract.
"There will extra furnishings and equipment -- that is anything that is not bolted down," Mace said. "If you have a chair that for instance is at the control desk. That will need to be purchased separately. Sheets, mattresses, those sorts of things we typically contract out separately. It is not under a construction contract."
Mayo asked if there is a "ballpark" figure for the things that are not bolted down.
That information should be compiled after the first of the year and bids brought to commissioners, Wood said.
Mayo also pointed out that building the jail would not require a tax increase. The county has been able to save money over the past several years and has set aside $10 million to pay for the project, he said.
The final cost could be between $10.5 million and $11 million after all of the fees and other costs are included, Wood said.
Wood said the project is being built at a tremendous savings to the county taxpayers.
Wood said he had found in his office a 2006 study by another company for a jail that would have cost $31 million.
The county also will save money by not sending inmates to other counties because of overcrowding at the current jail, Pate said.
"The other thing I think should be pointed out is that it currently takes 70 employees, somewhere in that neighborhood, to run a 200-bed jail," Wood said. "This is designed to handle 220 inmates with 28 employees. As Mr. Mace said earlier, the real savings is not in the brick and mortar. It is in the year-in and year-out operations.
"So when you are able to cut the operating expenses of personnel by that amount, because of how you design the jail, that is a tremendous savings to the taxpayers of this community in addition to the capital cost on the front end that we just talked about."