Change order for NFD bay floor reinforcement inspected further by council

Before voting on the consent agenda, the Newton City Council agreed to pull aside one of the items — a resolution approving a change order for the fire department’s engine bay floor reinforcement project — for further inspection and questions. Council member Joel Mills requested the item be discussed.

“I did notice that this resolution (on Item) 16 is a sizable amount of money, so I did have a quick little dialogue with our city administrator and found out, with the help of our city clerk and some others in finance, that the large amount of money can be approved on a consent agenda,” Mills said at the Oct. 20 council meeting.

However, he felt it would be beneficial for the general public to know the reasons why the $32,800 change order would be placed on the consent agenda and not on the regular agenda. Oftentimes, the consent agenda features small purchases or low impact resolutions, like approving liquor or tobacco licenses.

The aforementioned change order is the fourth change order of the bay floor reinforcement project, whose initial contract was approved for $107,750. Since then, there has been a $6,078 change order for increased charges, $322 for addressing a construction defect and $8,563 for an engineering review.

Including the final change order, the project totals more than $155,000.

The fourth change order is for additional work required to complete the floor reinforcement. Fire Chief Jarrod Wellik said he placed the order on the consent agenda because that is what he had done for the previous change orders. Wellik explained he wasn’t trying to pull the wool over council members’ eyes.

“I was just trying to keep things orderly and efficient,” Wellik said. “Change Order No. 4 is kind of the culmination. It’s the end of the project. Anytime you tear into an older building, there are things that are unknown and some things that are maybe not quite 100 percent the way they appear to be.”

In the far southeast corner of the fire station is a room that had block walls, and it was assumed those walls sat on top of footings. However, crews found out in the construction process the walls were not sitting on top of footings. Wellik said the city was then left to review the issue and proceed with one of two options.

“We either needed to put footings underneath it or we had to pull some block down and run the FRP panels underneath,” Wellik said. “So the choice was made to do the less expensive, which was to pull the block walls down and put that all the way through. It was a change that came up as conditions were found.”

Despite the costs of the project increasing by more than $47,000, Wellik argued it is “still pretty cheap compared to backing that ladder truck into the basement of this building.” Before it was the city’s fire station, Wellik said the building used to be a grocery store, so the floor loads were designed for far less.

“This should be the end of it,” Wellik said, suggesting it is the last change order.

According to city documents, a bay floor reinforcement was needed in order to support the new $2 million ladder truck, which is much heavier than the existing truck. Reinforcement was needed so the truck would not cause structural damage to the fire engine bay.

The contractor for the bay floor reinforcement is Minturn, Inc., the same company hired to complete the tennis courts project at Aurora Park; the tennis courts have also needed numerous change orders.