CITY COUNCIL AGENDA ITEM
ACTION REQUESTED:
title
Approve the award of Change Order #1 to Contract 19-305, Construction Engineering Services for North Aurora Road Widening, to TranSystems Corporation for an amount not to exceed $19,575 and a total award of $1,157,426
body
DEPARTMENT: Transportation, Engineering and Development
SUBMITTED BY: William Novack, Director/City Engineer
BOARD/COMMISSION REVIEW:
N/A
BACKGROUND:
The North Aurora Road widening project (CIP# SC033) is a joint effort between the Naperville Township and the City of Naperville. North Aurora Road is a primary connection between the cities of Naperville and Aurora and provides access to numerous businesses and subdivisions. North Aurora Road, between Fairway Drive in Naperville and Pennsbury Lane in Aurora, is a traffic bottleneck as it is the only remaining section of this corridor with a single lane for each direction for several miles. The existing traffic already exceeds the capacity of the current roadway and is expected to grow to nearly 33,000 vehicles per day by 2040.
In November 2007, the Transportation, Engineering and Development (TED) Business Group, through the procurement process, hired TranSystems Corporation to complete the preliminary engineering services. As part of the RFQ, staff had the option to use the services of the successful vendor for the design engineering and construction engineering phases of the project.
Following the completion of the preliminary engineering study, the City applied for federal funding. In December 2015, the City obtained $6 million through the federal Surface Transportation Program (STP) to be applied to construction costs.
In December 2016, the City Council awarded a contract to TranSystems to perform the detailed design engineering, land acquisition services, and permitting needed to begin construction of the roadway widening. In November 2019, TranSystems was awarded the contract to perform the construction engineering for the roadway widening project.
In April 2021, construction on the project began. Completion of construction was originally anticipated to be in late 2022.
DISCUSSION:
The scope of the construction engineering work for the North Aurora Road project includes:
• Coordination with the contractor, IDOT, numerous utilities, and adjacent property owners;
• Documentation and review of materials and quantities; and
• On-site review of the work
Change Order #1 is requested to add hours to the contract in order for the site inspector to perform the necessary additional on-site reviews to complete the project and close it out. Due to various unforeseen delays in construction, the original contract is not able to allow for on-site reviews to be performed through the end of the extended construction window. The particular construction delays are as follows:
1.) An equipment operator strike occurred from June 7 through July 26 for a total of seven weeks in the summer of 2022. Because of the IDOT requirements, the contractor was not able to source alternative materials for the project during the strike, so work was halted. The start-up of work following the settlement of the strike was slow due to the need to build back up supplies of materials that had been exhausted at the start of the strike. Because of the strike construction was pushed into 2023.
2.) In early 2023, the liquid asphalt supplier for the paving contractor had an explosion at their facility that halted their production of the material. At that time, paving of North Aurora Road was a critical construction activity. The paving contractor switched the material supplier, but the new mix design needed to be approved by IDOT, which caused delays due to the lengthy review/approval process. This review/approval process caused weeks of construction delays in early 2023.
The proposed cost of the additional construction engineering services required is $19,575. The Naperville Township Road District will be responsible for its proportionate share of the additional construction engineering services in the amount of $3,875.85. The intergovernmental agreement with the Naperville Township which addresses the cost share for both construction engineering and construction phases of the project contains a clause accounting for potential increases of cost up to 10% of the original estimated construction and construction engineering costs.
FISCAL IMPACT:
CIP #: SC033
Costs related to the construction engineering work for the North Aurora Road widening project are expensed to the account number listed below. In 2023, there is no budget allocated for engineering services related to SC033 as the project was due to be completed in 2022; however, the requested change order can be accommodated within the budget due to delays in other projects.
|
Account Number |
Fund Description |
Total Budget Amount |
|
30282200-531301 |
Capital Projects Fund |
$5,222,000 |