CITY COUNCIL AGENDA ITEM
ACTION REQUESTED:
title
Approve the award of Bid 20-213, Cross Connection Control Testing Records Administration, to Aqua Backflow, Inc for an amount not to exceed $453,350 and for a three-year term
body
DEPARTMENT: Water Utilities
SUBMITTED BY: Darrell Blenniss, Director
BOARD/COMMISSION REVIEW:
N/A
BACKGROUND:
The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) requires the city to maintain cross-connection control testing records for all water customers who have testable devices. There are currently more than 15,000 devices on record in the city. Customers with a backflow prevention device are required by federal law and state statutes to test their devices annually by a certified cross connection control inspector. Annually, customers owning a device must select a certified testing contractor from the many firms that offer the service within the city. After testing, the owner or his/her inspection contractor must submit the test results to the city as evidence of compliance. Administration of these records was performed by in-house staff until in 2012. At that time, the program administration was then outsourced to an outside contractor.
Under the outsourced program, customers continue to select their own testing contractor and pay their own testing fees. Instead of submitting test results directly to the city, the testing contractor submits results to a third-party administrator where the third-party administrator charges a documentation fee. Typically, the documentation fee is paid by the testing contractor and added to the customer's bill for testing. City staff is not involved in the testing or documentation process and does not assess or collect fees for the program.
In May 2020, the Water Utilities issued Bid 20-213 seeking a firm to provide a Cross-Connection Control Testing Records Administrator to assist with administration of Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) mandated cross-connection code compliance r...
Click here for full text