Contract labor pains

All the development projects underway in Sidney this summer make it difficult to find contractors willing to work on a job. The amount of work also inflates project prices.

The city attempted to bid out several projects last week and received bids significantly higher than the engineer’s estimate on all of them. Sidney received only one bid for each project. In May, the city attempted to bid two of these projects, the water and sewer work on the Fairfield Marriott planned for the interstate area, and received no bids at all.

In this second round of bidding the proposed contractor’s price for the water district was $30,000 above the estimate, at $174,000, and the sewer district was around $20,000 above the estimate, at around $207,000.

The street improvement districts for the Marriott project were even higher than the estimated cost. The two streets planned for the development were a combination of around $225,000 over the engineer’s estimate.

“As you probably know, the problem we’re running into is just lack of contractors that are available, in fact all the bids we received had stipulations on the timeline when they could start as well,” said Jack Baker of Baker & Associates which engineered these projects.

At the developer’s request, the city rejected the bids for the water and sewer districts. Baker relayed that the developer wished to negotiate with another contractor who expressed interest after the bidding for this work. Also at the developer’s request, the city tabled the paving bids until a later date in order give it time to decide whether or not to re-bid the paving work or to attempt to negotiate with the contractor.

Baker explained that the developer didn’t wish to reject the paving bids because if earthwork was factored into the price those bids are closer to the engineer’s estimate.

“There is maybe some room there to negotiate with the street paving contractor and get that down closer to those original estimates,” Baker said.

Bids for one street and sewer installation in the Weiser development also came in higher than expected last week. The Weiser development is in the interstate area as well. The bid for the street at around $270,00 was $120,000 more than the estimate, while the bid for the sewer at around $60,000 was almost double the estimate. These projects also only received one bid.

“These projects are both smaller in scale, fairly simple and straightforward ,but the prices still came in considerably higher,” Baker said.

The council rejected these bids as well, at the developer’s request. He is considering bidding this project himself or negotiating with the city and building the streets himself.

“At the prices that we got, he just didn’t see that it was feasible in moving forward,” Baker said.

Construction projects planned for this year in Sidney include the new $53 million Sidney Regional Medical Center, the $34 million Cabela’s Interstate 80 area corporate campus expansion, multiple street projects including the expansion of Pole Creek Crossing and work on 10th Ave., a $900,000 expansion of the hiking, biking and walking trail and the Cabela’s housing project, set to begin work on its first phase consisting of 92 homes this year.