The Emporia Gazette

November 20, 2009

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Re-bidding of at least part of the Emporia school district’s $6.8 million energy project has not been ruled out, according to Koby Kampschroeder of Custom Energy Solutions, one of 10 energy service companies (ESCOs) authorized by the state of Kansas to handle energy-conservation programs and projects for governmental units and school districts.

Kampschroeder represented Custom Energy during the district’s energy audit, subsequent bid-lettings and arranging for contractors, and final approval from the school board.

Since the board approved the project on Sept. 23 and accepted the financing through PiperJaffray financial services, an Andover sports company official has said that if the company had been allowed to bid, it would have saved the local school district between $200,000 and $400,000 of the $1.67 million bid accepted from McConnell and Associates to install the new artificial turf football-soccer field, a track around the field, and associated accessories, such as fencing, bleachers, and sidewalks. McConnell plans to use FieldTurf artificial turf.

Kampschroeder has talked with Paul Driver, president of ATG Sports Industries of Andover, the company that wants to be allowed to bid.

Kampschroeder noted that ATG’s estimate was not based on written specifications.

“They’ve said that without knowing what the scope of work is, so we’re starting to share some of that scope of work with them as well. We’re trying to see if that’s valid or not,” Kampschroeder said.

The list of proposed contract team members, and their accompanying bids that made up Custom Energy’s project cost totals, may not be the companies that will be used on the project, although the school board voted to accept Custom Energy’s final plan.

“There’s been no formal selection yet,” Kampschroeder said.

Speaking specifically about the athletic portion of the project, Kampschroeder explained how the bidding had been handled.

State law allows governmental entities to assign responsibility for bidding and following through with projects in certain circumstances involving energy-saving projects.

“We did what we call a select-bid process,” Kampschroeder said, “so basically we pre-qualify bidders and we had four bidders that were pre-qualified and then three ended up actually providing the bids.”

Kampschroeder said that checking references of the companies is part of the qualification process, and that would need to be done for ATG, which would use Ram Turf artificial turf in its installation.

ATG’s request to bid could prompt additional bidding.

“That’s something that we’re talking to the district about, and we’re trying to figure out how to deal with that,” Kampschroeder said during the interview last week. “We have talked about the possibility of throwing everything out and re-bidding it. .. I think there’s been no decision made on that at this point.”

Kampschroeder said he was concerned that if the amounts of bids were published and discarded, and new bids requested, companies will know the amounts of the bids submitted in the previous round of bidding.

School district Superintendent John Heim shares that concern, because of its potential effect on future projects.

He said that earlier in the project development, he had called four or five school districts who had similar projects to see how the pricing compared, and was satisfied that the cost for the local project was “right about in the middle.”

“Once you go through the process, you accept bids, it’s really not fair to the people that have already bid and showed their cards, so to speak, and then be subject to someone who didn’t go through that process being able to lowball,” Heim said. “... The concern is always that when you do another project, will you be able to get bidders because if they think the first go-around is just to see how the bids come out and you’re going to re-bid it ... then you’re not going to get bids. Contractors won’t mess with you.”

Heim said, however, that he was interested in following through on the information from ATG, and that Kampschroeder has completed a comparison survey for both companies. Results will be presented to the school board at an upcoming meeting.

Kampschroeder’s background checks of references and other information are the same for each company, so each company was measured by the same criteria to qualify. Among those items that were checked are timeliness of completion, guarantees, product quality, whether there have been issues arising after installations, maintaining a good job site and other criteria.

“Just so it’s done in exactly the same way,” Heim said.

“I want to see the information before I make a decision,” Heim said. “I want to try to be fair. I want to try to get the best price. But I also want to have a quality product. Every company thinks they’re the best and the cheapest and everybody’s got a little different angle on what they’re selling. ...

“What we’re losing sight of is that overall this project’s going to save the district a lot of money, and $7 million, $350,000 a year, that’s money that we can spend on classroom budgets, instruction, that we would have been paying the utility companies. That was the whole intent of this project.”

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