REPORT TO THE CITY COUNCIL
FROM: GREGORY A. BARFIELD, Assistant City Manager
Interim Director
Department of Transportation
BY: JOE VARGAS, Assistant Director
Department of Transportation
SANDY CETTI, Capital Development Specialist
Department of Transportation
SUBJECT
Title
Award an architect and engineering contract to Provost and Pritchard Consulting Group, of Fresno, California, in the amount of $225,554.72 for full design services for seventy-five (75) Fresno Area Express Standard Bus Stops (Bid File #10129)
Body
RECOMMENDATION
Staff recommends Council award an architect and engineering contract to Provost and Pritchard Consulting Group, of Fresno, California, in the amount of $225,554.72 for full design services for seventy-five (75) Fresno Area Express Standard Bus Stops.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Department of Transportation, FAX Division seeks to award a contract to deliver full design services for seventy-five (75) Fresno Area Express Standard Bus Stops located throughout the City of Fresno, per City of Fresno Standard drawings. These design drawings will lead to construction to remediate Americans with Disability Act (ADA) deficiencies found at the stops per the FAX ADA Transition Plan approved by Council on September 2, 2021. The remediation work will also serve to provide safer bus stops and an improved customer experience at each of the project stops.
BACKGROUND
In December 2015, Council approved a consultant to survey Fresno’s bus stops systemwide, identify barriers for access, and develop a transition plan per Title II of the ADA to guide FAX in the correction of ADA-related deficiencies. The resulting plan’s adoption on September 2, 2021, provided FAX with a 30-year remediation schedule for ADA deficiencies at bus stops systemwide.
A key component of the FAX ADA Transition Plan is FAX’s commitment to spend $500,000 annually on the remediation of ADA deficiencies. FAX has up to $250,000 for design services behind this project and an additional $350,000 for the construction phase of the work once design completes. Additionally, the Transition Plan provided a prioritization of FAX bus routes according to ridership and access to key services (healthcare, education, food, etc.) to guide the locations targeted by this $500,000 annual expenditure. Per this prioritization structure, the next routes that FAX intends to focus on are 38, 28, and 34.
FAX is also guided by the Federal Transit Administration’s (FTA) Transit Asset Management (TAM) policies. TAM seeks to establish an expected condition rating at which FAX must maintain its assets. While bus stops are not subject to the requirements of the FTA’s TAM policies, FAX recognizes the important role that well-maintained bus stops play in the FAX customer experience. To improve the customer experience and safety associated with bus stops, FAX has begun the process of improving its tracking and management of condition ratings of bus stops and associated passenger amenities such as shelters, benches, and trash cans. Council approved a FAX contract with Bureau Veritas to collect condition assessments on all bus stops and associated passenger amenity assets. This information is being loaded into a new Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) software (a Council approved sole source procurement through Trapeze Software, Inc.) for tracking and prioritizing future capital investments. This software and associated database will be used with the ADA Transition Plan to inform decisions about where FAX makes its capital investments throughout the bus system.
FAX seeks to award a contract for architecture and engineering services to Provost and Pritchard Consulting Group in the amount of $225,554.72. This contract will utilize information housed within FAX’s ADA Transition Plan, the in-progress condition assessments of FAX bus stops, and the recently revised FAX standard bus stop drawings to provide construction-ready drawings for the next 75 bus stops that need repairs and ADA remediations. These stops will then be broken up into three phases of work for construction according to FAX’s commitment of $500,000 annually for ADA remediation work. The stops being designed are found throughout all City of Fresno City Council districts.
A Notice Inviting Bids was published to Planet Bids on June 24, 2022 and was picked up by six additional agencies for distribution of the solicitation. Proposal submissions closed on July 20, 2022 with one bidder submitting a sealed proposal. FAX called and emailed prospective bidders listed on Plant Bids to understand the lack of proposals. All comments received indicated a lack of available staff time and other resources available to bid this project. The technical review of this proposal was held July 27, 2022, following the committee and evaluation guidelines presented in the solicitation. Once the qualifications for Provost and Pritchard were determined suitable to perform the work and their proposal was deemed both responsible and responsive, their sealed cost proposal was opened.
FAX entered negotiations after opening the cost proposal which led to a mutually agreeable amount of $225,554.72, a 42% reduction of the original proposal. The design work follows recently revised City Standard Drawings for FAX bus stops which speeds up the design process by allowing for the application of key specifications, dimensions, and bus stop layouts across all the project stops and reduces the individualized input necessary to complete the design work on each stop. Therefore, FAX determined it was not necessary to utilize as many design review intervals before reaching final plans and specifications reducing the total consultant hours required to complete the project. Clarification was provided to Provost and Pritchard regarding how information on each of the stops would be sent to them reducing the amount of field time required by their personnel. FAX was also able to negotiate the reduction in more expensive staff hours on the proposal according to past experiences on other design contracts.
The City Attorney has approved the contract to form.
ENVIRONMENTAL FINDINGS
This is not a “project” for the purpose of CEQA pursuant to CEQA Guidelines section 15378.
LOCAL PREFERENCE
Local preference was not applicable as the use of federal funding precludes the use of local preference. However, the anticipated awardee is a local business in accordance with Administrative Order 3-1.
FISCAL IMPACT
This project has no fiscal impact to the General Fund. This project will be funded from FTA 5307 Urbanized Area Formula grant funds for use in urban transit planning engineering and design.
Attachment:
Consultant Agreement