The Pike Company

Changes to the original $70 million new county jail plans have included about $90,000 in structural, product and utility revisions, senior project manager Carl York says.

York gave the latest review of the project on West Main Street Road during Genesee County’s Human Services Committee meeting Tuesday.

“Some of these were items that just weren’t on the drawings. And so there’s a supplemental instruction that came out in the contract … so again, changes that are happening on the project. So far, we’ve had 46 instructions,” York said. “That’s about where I would expect it to be. None of these were huge changes. Some of them are just things that weren’t picked up on their original set of documents. And they have to be done. There’s been no issues so far from the Commission of Corrections.”

Having to add some precast, revising the type of flooring, making structural revisions to a pod and also to plumbing and gas provisions made for processing nearly $90,000 of change orders in December, York said.

All of the extras are not a concern, he said, as there is plenty of contingency funding for such needs. The first jail cell was delivered to the jail site this past week, and installed on Friday, Jan. 13. During the next two months or so, a total of about 100 cells will be installed at the property adjacent to County Building #2 and the Animal Shelter.

County Legislative Chairwoman Shelley Stein asked if those changes were above and beyond the $70 million project cost, and York said no.  In fact, the cost is at “.4 percent, not even .5 percent of your entire project cost,” he said.

“You’re doing fabulous,” he said.

Stein wanted that fact to be emphasized, given the possibility that some legislators had thought recent change orders were piling up to mean a larger price tag for the jail, a big ticket item not readily accepted by everyone in the county as it is.

“Good, that should just be made really clear to all of our legislators here, because we certainly did hear some conversation after the last approval that … now it's 70 million plus,” Stein said.

York assured her that “It is not $70 million-plus.”

During the transport phase of the jail cell last week, County Manager Matt Landers said that he's pleased the project is so far coming in under budget.

The Department of Corrections has contacted The Pike Company, lead for the project, and a meeting is being set up for later this week to review jail plans, York said.

File Photo of Carl York, senior project manager, of The Pike Company, by Joanne Beck.

A worker injured at the construction site of the new Genesee County Jail is back on the job, the senior project manager for the facility management firm said on Monday.

Carl York of The Pike Company of Rochester updated the Genesee County Legislature’s Public Service Committee on the progress of the $70 million, 184-bed jail that's going up next to County Building 2 on West Main Street Road.

He said the worker was stationed inside the excavating shield, directing a co-worker on top who was operating the heavy equipment.

“He was directing the bucket back toward himself and he ran out of room and got caught between,” York said. “The worker was transported to the hospital and today he returned back to work. So, he was out for about a week and a half. But he is back to work.”

That’s good news for the employee, but not so fortunate for the site contractor, Bayside Paving Contractors, Inc. of Shortsville, York added.

“OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) did come out to investigate and they found nothing wrong with the safety or the way they were working,” York said. “They have not finalized their findings yet. But more than likely the contractor will probably get fined because they did not report the accident to OSHA within 24 hours which is required of a hospitalization.

“But that was really the only issue they had with over what happened. They said it was just a flat-out accident.”

Construction is ahead of schedule by about six weeks on the foundation work, York reported, adding that there have been no issues with stormwater pollution and no changes to the total project cost.

York said workers have met one of the first (and many) milestones by completing the building pad prep work three days ahead of the July 26 target date.

“Underground utilities -- our sanitary is about 90 percent complete, stormwater is about 40 percent complete and the water and fire service is about 70 percent complete,” he said.

He said media coverage over the fact that Pike was waiting for National Grid to supply permanent power to the site was a “real good boost … as we did get some good updates from National Grid.”

Foundational work on the administration building and the cell pods is moving along, he added, with expectations that all of that work will be complete by the first week of September.

“Right now, we're waiting for the mechanical – the plumbing and electrical contractors to start on August 15. It was just they couldn't get their deliveries moved up as fast as (general contractor) LeChase (Construction Services of Rochester) was moving along with foundations.”

York said his firm is exploring the addition of a booster pump for future growth, mentioning that a decision will be made on that after speaking with County Manager Matt Landers and his team this week.

Representatives of the state Commission of Correction visited the site last week and “were very pleased” with the progress, he said. Crews are in the third month of a 20-month construction schedule.

Previously: Safety, communication and a little rain for new Genesee County Jail project

The project executive for the construction management firm working with Genesee County on its new county jail project this afternoon said everyone should be “very happy” with the bids that were submitted for the six work areas that have been identified.

“Considering the economy and what's happening around the world -- the amount of work that's out there right now -- I think we should all be very happy that we have these results. They are very, very good results to be honest with you,” said Mark Bollin of The Pike Company of Rochester during a Genesee County Legislature Committee of the Whole meeting.

The special session was scheduled specifically for the awarding of construction bids for the $70 million, 184-bed jail initiative.

Bollin (photo above) went into detail about the companies that submitted low bids and answered questions from legislators about the project, that is scheduled to break ground on May 9 on land next to County Building 2 on West Main Street Road. He said work will take place over 20 months, with a projected completion date of January 2024 (plus another two months for close-out and punch list items).

As reported earlier today on The Batavian, the six low bidders are as follows:

General Contractor - LeChase Construction Services, LLC, of Rochester, $34,980,000;

Site Work - Bayside Paving Contractors Inc., Shortsville, at a stipulated sum of $3,792,000;

Food Services Equipment Work - Joseph Flihan Company, Utica, at a stipulated sum of $826,800;

Plumbing and Fire Protection Work - Thurston Dudeck LLC, Ontario, at a stipulated sum of $4,362,000;

Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning Work - Bell Mechanical Contractor, Inc., East Rochester, at a stipulated sum of $5,112,000;

Electrical and Security Electronics Work - Kaplan-Schmidt, Inc., Rochester, at a stipulated sum of $8,200,000.

The total of the six bids -- $57,272,800 -- is $2.7 million less than what The Pike Company budgeted for the work listed above, Bollin said.

Legislators unanimously voted in favor of accepting the bids, and also voted on amending the project reserve fund to increase the amount to be bonded over a 40-year period to the $70 million figure.

Bollin said his company solicited for bids throughout New York, advertising in different places, including the Builders Exchange to Rochester and Buffalo.

“The Pike Company also has a system where we sent out the advertisement to bid to upwards of 5,000 individuals throughout the state,” he said. “So, we actually had very good participation. There was a number of projects that were out to bid at the time. Contractors are busy right now. But we actually did have very good versus participation.”

He advised that each of the six contractors have a “definitive scope of work” and each are aware of their exact responsibilities.

“There was a schedule included in the bidding documents, along with intermediate milestone dates that each contractor was responsible to meet -- both material deliveries, labor, etc. So, every contractor knew exactly what they were supposed to do,” he added.

Response to the bidding documents sent to prospective companies indicated that “they were probably some of the best construction documents … that they’ve ever seen,” Bollin said. “And that was reinforced by our estimating people who also said that those were a very good set of documents.”

A breakdown of the bids showed that three came in on the site work package, five for the general contractor, one for the food service (which came in higher than anticipated due to the cost of stainless steel and kitchen equipment, Bollin said), five for the plumbing work, six for heating and ventilation and five for electrical.

Bollin said all the contracts are ready to go out, along with notice of award letters that he will hand deliver tomorrow. The selected contractors are required to return the signed contracts along with insurance documents within seven calendar days, “at which time, the county can then sign the documents.”

Bollin said he is confident in the stability and expertise of the companies, noting that he has done work with all of them.

When asked about cost overruns, he said a “field order allowance” of $90,000 is built into each contract, but any charges over the bid amount must be approved by the legislature. He also said that The Pike Company will have personnel on site during construction as a quality control measure.

He said he has received assurances from the low bidders that long-lead materials, such as PVC conduit, electrical gear and air handling units, are being ordered now in an attempt to avoid delays.

“One of the reasons why we don't want to issue the notice proceed until May 9 is to give all the contractors a five week period of time …until we actually start construction to start securing steel and precast concrete,” he said. “I know for a fact that the general contractor is already committed to a steel contractor and he's already starting getting things ready. The precast contractor, I personally talked to him after the bid and he said he's already getting things ready to go.”