REPORT TO THE CITY COUNCIL
March 26, 2015
FROM: SCOTT L. MOZIER, PE, Director
Public Works Department
BY: ROBERT N. ANDERSEN, PE, Assistant Director
Public Works Department, Capital Management Division
SUBJECT
Title
Approve the Fourth Amendment to the Agreement with Sharp Inspection Group in the amount of $50,000 for construction management services on the City of Fresno commercial water meter retrofit project (All Council Districts)
Body
RECOMMENDATION
Staff is requesting that the Council approve the Fourth Amendment to the Agreement with Sharp Inspection Group and allow for the Public Works Director or his designee to sign on behalf of the City.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The City has been replacing Commercial Water Meters with the Automatic Meter Reading ("AMR") technology since Spring of 2013. The meter replacement should be completed by March 2015. This amendment is for the replacement of 300 Type B-12 boxes with Type B-16 boxes that will allow foe lockable Armorcast lids.
BACKGROUND
Since 2009, the City Department of Public Utilities has been working diligently to get all of the 110,000 residences throughout the metropolitan area on water meters. This was due to the various Senate bills requiring the City to be completely metered by January 2013 or face losing our Federal water allotment. We completed the residential project in Fall 2012.
City staff has started retrofitting the remaining commercial manually read meters with the AMR meters that the rest of the City is using. This means either upgrading or replacing the manually read meters on our commercial customers. There are approximately 20,350 commercial meters to retrofit. These meters run from 5/8" to 2" in size. The larger meters (above 2") will be retrofitted by City staff. By doing this project, all water customers will have their water usage collected electronically. Also, the Utility Service Workers we currently employ will be able to assist in maintaining the new meter inventory.
On July 26, 2012, Council approved an agreement with Sharp Inspection Group, Inc. for construction management services on the City of Fresno commercial water meter retrofit project. The assumption at that time was that this would be completed by October 31, 2013 (15 months).
On December 20, 2012, Council approved the first amendment with Sharp Inspection Group for the coverage of warranty issues and customers complaints on the residential meter project between the end of the residential Construction Management contract (December 31, 2012) with the prime consultant Vali Cooper and Associates and the beginning of the Commercial Construction Management contract with Sharp Inspection Group. Sharp Inspection Group has handled these customer concerns since then under the commercial contract.
On February 28, 2013, Council awarded a project to Vulcan Construction Inc. for installation of the commercial water meters sized 2" and below. The assumption was that the project would take two years to complete. The completion date for this project is April 27, 2015.
On October 29, 2013, Council approved the second amendment to agreement with Sharp Inspection Group to extend the original contract to September 1, 2014. No additional monies were requested.
On August 28, 2014, Council approved the third amendment to the agreement with Sharp Inspection Group in the amount of $626,968 to provide the additional construction management services necessary to complete the commercial meter installation project. The timeline to complete the commercial meter installation was extended to April 27, 2015.
The meter installation project should be completed in March 2015. Due to the extra funds available in the Vulcan Purchase Order, staff will have Vulcan Construction replace 300 B-12 boxes with B-16 boxes. The replacement of the boxes will allow for the lids to be lockable and hopefully deter theft of the meters. The current contract with Vulcan Construction covers this type of work. All work should be completed by April 27, 2015.
Staff is requesting that Council approve the fourth amendment to agreement with Sharp Inspection Group in the amount of $50,000 for the construction management services for the installation of the 300 water meter boxes and allow for the Public Works Director or designee to sign the contract on behalf of the City.
ENVIRONMENTAL FINDINGS
By the definition provided in the California Environmental Quality Act Guidelines Section 15378 the award of this contract does not qualify as a "project" and is therefore exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act requirements.
LOCAL PREFERENCE
Local preference was not implemented because this item is amending an existing agreement.
FISCAL IMPACT
The funds for this contract exist in the current Water Enterprise Fund budget.
Attachment: Fourth Amendment to Agreement