Representatives from JE Dunn, construction managers for the Vernon County jail project, came to Nevada on Wednesday to update commissioners on progress made on the project and to explain some of the delays that have taken place.

Dan Ferguson, JE Dunn representative gave a description of the company's responsibilities during the project and explained why it benefits the county to make use of their services.

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"We've been hired by the county as the construction manager, so we will provide oversight and supervision relative to the construction of the new facility," said Ferguson. "That means we will provide an on-site superintendent, and project management; we'll solicit all the construction bids; we'll manage the bidders as well as the schedule associated with the project."

"That's a quick overview. Really what happens is we go out and solicit the bidders and manage this project for the county. The county actually holds the contracts, but we manage them. A CM is viewed as a professional services opposed to the county going out and hiring an individual GC or soliciting general contractor bids where they'd get one lump-sum bid. We break the work into multiple packages, we manage those packages on behalf of the county, and in turn they get to see all the information, the sub-contractor bids, all of that is available to them as opposed to a general contractor lump-sum number that they would not be able to break down into various scope or trades. It is an excellent process because it offers a variety of ways for which the county can manage the work as opposed to just pulling in a general contractor and giving him a set of plans and say give me a number and having the general contractor tell them 'here's what it's going to cost you and here's how long it's going to take,' and they have no idea if they're getting the best deal or not."

Ryan McConnell, another JE Dunn representative taking part in the meeting noted that as construction managers they serve as a second party involved with viewing plans and may catch problems others missed.

"It adds another layer of quality assurance to the project as well, where you have some experienced eyes looking at the project on behalf of the owner," said McConnell. "A good example is our site grading problem that we've been going through over the last few months. One of those bids could have been put out on the street had a general contractor bid it without that knowledge and find out, oops, we have major site problems, and then come back and request more money. We were able to head that problem off earlier and get it addressed before we brought the bidders in."

The site grade issue McConnell spoke of has to do with the major changes to the construction plans over the past several weeks due to the discovery of a potential flooding hazard on the site. A 60-by-100-foot metal storage building, along with the jail's impound yard had to be turned 90 degrees, separated and moved several feet in order to keep it out of a low level area that may have flooded frequently.

JE Dunn representatives did not comment on how much it would have cost or the extent of damage that could have been caused had the building been constructed without these changes, but all parties present agreed that the detrimental effects would have been substantial.

The metal building was bid separately from the main jail facility and construction should begin within the next week, weather permitting.

Ferguson also spoke with commissioners about the expected timeline set for bidding the construction project for the main jail facility.

He said, "Should we get the drawings early next week … we will issue a bid notification via fax based on that contractor bidders list," said Ferguson. "I think tentatively the bid date Ryan was looking at setting was Tuesday April 22."

Despite confidence in their ability to uphold these dates, Ferguson did say there are other factors involved and noted that the time frame could be altered to some extent.

"It's not unusual that we have some addendums along the way. It's fairly typical that the bid date be postponed by a week or a few days, whatever it might be," said Ferguson. "Four weeks is more than enough time to bid this type of project but it really comes down to bidders getting the plans and getting into them. A lot of times what happens is they'll wait until the end. In the end we'll have that discussion with you and we will all make the call together. We'll do what's in your best interest."

Vernon County Souther Commissioner Kennon Shaw voiced some of his frustration in the delays already encountered with the jail project and explained his concerns come from the steady rise in building materials.

"We're used to being postponed. We've been doing that since the last of October the first of November. What's really bugging me is, I'm looking at the price of steel and concrete and stainless steel from our original, when we started this in the last week of October the first week of November. I'm looking at the difference in price of all these materials from the first of November until now, and we've been set back and set back," Shaw said.

Ferguson explained that while these concerns are valid, inflation allowances of roughly four percent were added into the building project estimate from the beginning.

"Ss a rule we will figure half to three quarters of a percent a month as a minimum. That's just an estimating rule of thumb. Did we have some inflation already calculated in the project? Yes we did," he said.

Following the calculations set by Dunn, one half of a percent each month, the minimum expected cost of construction material inflation, will allow construction to begin around July 1, before the county will be paying more than allotted for in material costs.

Once bidding has taken place, Ferguson expects construction will take about 11 months.

"We will issue a construction schedule with the bid documents, Ryan is in the process of updating that. What I mean by that is we still think it's going to be, we told you (the commission) last year we're looking at 11 months, it will be somewhere between 11 and 12 months when Ryan is done updating the schedule. The only changes will be based on the original schedule. We just can't say, OK, we were going to start in October, now were going to start in March, because what happens is, we have certain activities which will now fall within winter.

"We want to make sure that we re-sequence those activities so that they occur early in the fall or we address them with winterization."

Commissioners asked Ferguson what guidelines are in place for the event of a contractor's not performing their portion of the work. Ferguson said this is very rarely an issue, but the company does have set practices for this scenario.

"Typically, the construction schedule that gets issued won't be specific to all trade activities. Say we've got 20 trade packages that we were going to bid, we won't have a time frame for all 20 of those saying you start her and you finish here. What we will do is we'll outline various milestones that are important to the sequencing of the work then during the bidding process and during construction we will coordinate that process so that he understands when his building materials need to be on site and when they need to be installed," he said.

"If at any point along the a contractor has trouble meeting that schedule our response is two-fold. One we will try to assist them to the best of our ability to expedite their materials or their work, or we'll re-sequence work in some cases without impacting the overall schedule.

"When we're not able to do that we will advise that specific contractor that any additional costs that would result from the delay of the subsequent work would be his responsibility."

Due to Missouri state laws Dunn cannot bid on projects or self perform any construction work for which they also act as the construction managers. This means if they do run into problems with sub-contractors they do not have the option of stepping in and building any portion of the project themselves.

The new bid opening date has been set for April 8 and the bid opening is slated to take place in the diner of the Vernon County fairgrounds, April 22.

"The only thing that would change these dates would be if Larry (Goldberg, the architect hired by the county for the jail project) was unable to issue these drawings to us because of the civil (engineer)," said Ferguson.

"The sooner we can get this out in front of the bidders, the better."