ST. GEORGE – In response to pot holes and repaving needs on State Route 18 and Bluff Street, a public works contract has been awarded to A-T Asphalt Paving, Inc. of St. George for repaving of the much-traveled city artery.
Due to some contract issues that arose, the project, originally scheduled to begin on Oct. 13, will now begin at midnight Sunday, October 16, with completion scheduled for mid-November. The ongoing work in progress will be performed between 7 p.m and 6 a.m. six days a week, Sundays being excluded.
The first section of Bluff Street to be addressed will run from 700 N and work up towards Red Hills Parkway. Once that has all been paved, they will treat Bluff Street from 700 N down to Main Street at the Interstate 15 interchange.
Kevin Kitchen, Media spokesperson for Utah Department of Transportation, said they typically work from the outside in, causing single lane closures.
Cameron Young of A-T said that access to businesses along Bluff would be maintained, with some limitations as milling and paving operations occur. Kitchen pointed out that the contractor chose to do the upper end of Bluff Street first out of respect for hotels and businesses servicing tourism with the Senior Games presently in town.
Kitchen explained that UDOT’s contracting award is made under a regulated bidding environment that follows federal regulations.
“Basically we ask these companies to supply us a bid on materials but show us how innovative and how quickly they can deliver this product,” said Kitchen. “So when they submit a bid they submit the materials and their time element [there is a formula that converts the bidders’ proposed time element to dollars for purposes of the bid].”
When the price of the project and the time element of the project are combined, a final bid is reached and “the lowest bid always gets it if they meet all the requirements,” said Kitchen. “It’s a low-bid environment,” he added.
Thus, under the federally regulated bidding process, whether or not a bidding contractor is locally based or from outside of the area, the lowest bidding contractor who can meet the contract requirements will receive the award.
In the case of Bluff Street’s repaving contract, A-T came in with the lowest bid and was awarded the contract.
Young said that all but one company that A-T is engaging as sub-contractors are local. And the one that is not is from Salt Lake City.
“On the project,” said Young, “there’s us [A-T] which is a local company, a local company Red Canyon Contractors, which is doing the manhole covers and water valve covers, a local company Coughlin Company, which does rotomilling (they have big machines that have teeth on them that grind up the asphalt), we have Straight Stripe painting, a local St. George company which will do all the pavement markings, American Traffic Service will be doing all the traffic control … a St. George company, and we have a microsurface we have to put on in the Spring, there are only two in Utah that do that, [and we are going with] Intermountain Slurry Seal out of Salt Lake; We have a survey guy that will be doing all the surveying, he’s a local, Provalue Engineering.”
Young said that the crews and employees of all of these companies, including his own, are locally based.
There are incentives on these public works projects. Kitchen said that “if they beat their bid time, an incentive does kick in.” Conversely he said, “If they go past their time, there’s a disincentive; so they have a real incentive to get in and get out.”
Copyright 2011 St. George News. This material may not be published or rewritten without written consent.