Nov 14, 2022 Public Utilities Board on 2022-11-14 9:00 AM

I would like to call the November 14th 2022 meeting of the Public Utilities Board to order. Do we have anyone from the public that would be here to speak? Do they phone in on this meeting? Okay. All right. We have several items on the consent agenda. Would anyone like to pull any for discussion? Yes ma'am. Items F and H. F and H. Okay. Yes ma'am. Just got some questions. I'd also like to pull A and B briefly. Okay. We can go in alphabetical order. I move approval of C, D, E, I, J, K, L, M, and N. Second. Okay. Any discussion? All in favor say, "Aye." Aye. Aye. All opposed? Thank you. Shall we just start with A? Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the Board, Brian Burner, Solid Waste Director. How may I answer questions? Morning. Morning. As I said kind of briefly, so if my math is right, A and B together accounts for less than 3% of the total coming into the landfill. Actually, I think it's less than 3% of the total contracts that we'd looked at. Contracts, yes. You may remember two months ago we talked about the three big wastewater agreements at the end we tacked on that we were working with two municipal entities. These are those two entities, and we're finally bringing those forward to you. Yeah, so I kind of just wanted to ask what's kind of like thinking long term, what's our plan for ... You don't have to get into specifics, of course, but how big a mountain of trash are we making? How long can it last? There's just kind of me thinking along the kind of the long term future lines there. Well, that's a really good question. I appreciate the opportunity to respond to that. Ultimately, what we're hoping to do within these next two years is really identify opportunities that we can take both programmatic and non-programmatic materials and divert those from the landfill. By having contracts such as these in place, what it allows us to do is to leverage the materials being brought in by third parties that we would probably get anyway, but allows us to divert additionally more and extend the life of the landfill. Currently, we have probably 40, 45 years worth of life left in the landfill. What we'd like to be able to do is, pursuant to our Copy of the Solid Waste Management Strategy, continue to push that out 50, 60, 70 more years, ideally, is what we're hoping to do. But in these first two years, working with not only our big three haulers that we've contracted with, but with these smaller haulers to identify, first of all, where they're getting their material from, but also what type of material they're bringing us so that we can sit down and actually identify third parties to come in and manage that non-programmatic material, things such as textiles, wood chips, metals, those things that you would normally not put in your blue bin at the curb. Yeah. Great. Okay. That's all I had. All right. Okay. Move to approve if nobody has anything else. A and B. Yes, A and B. Is there a second? Can we do them together? Do they need to be separate? We'll actually need to deal with those individually. Okay. Then I move to approve A. Okay. I second. Okay. We have a, and Mr. Jump is moved approval, and Mr. Bix seconded. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Same sign. Thank you. Move to approve item B, if I may. Okay. All right. Let's see. Madam Chair, so you have a motion and a second for item B, if we can take a vote on that. Item B also. Okay. All right. Sorry about that. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Same sign. Okay. Thank you. We have item G. I'm sorry, we missed that. That one has been, we need to add that to our discussion today. Madam Chair, it's item F. F and H. I did have F. Are we adding G? H. G was missed when Devin said that he would approve all of them. G was missed, so we just want to make sure that's correct. Okay. Okay. We missed G. Does someone want to move approval of that? Yeah, I think I might have actually said H instead of G, so can I correct them a little motion? Please. What's the best way to? You wanted to pull which item? So I moved to approve H and all the others, and I meant to move to approve G and not H. So which item is it that you actually want discussed? We want G discussed, no, we want H discussed. And G to be approved. And G to be approved. Okay, so you need to move approval for G, and then you need to pull item H for discussion now and give the public a chance to move. Okay. Along with F. Thank you. So correcting, in order to correct my misspeak earlier, I would move to approve consent agenda item G. I second. Discuss, excuse me. Okay. Can you make that in the same motion? Okay, is there a second? Mr. Beck seconds it. All in favor of approving G, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Same sign. All right. And Mr. Beck, would you like to pull H? Right. I'd like to address F and H one at a time. Okay. Is there a second? Okay, Mr. Jump seconds it. Any discussion? Madam Chair, I don't think you needed to vote on that particular item. Item F and H has been pulled for questions. We did. Yes, we did. Okay. All right. All in favor, say aye. Oh, we don't need to vote. Okay. Now, are we straight? Let's discuss F. Okay. Thank you, Chair. In this item in F, PUB 22-183, we have what appears to be a four-year-old compressor that sustained a catastrophic failure and now requires the city to spend $225,000 plus for the appropriate rental replacement and labor associated with this failed starting air pressure. And I may be missing something on this level. A lot of this stuff goes over my head, so bear with me here. But looking at this from the position of an individual consumer, was there no warranty on this part that would address this kind of catastrophic failure? Was this failure, or second part of the question, was this failure of the part itself or is the OME saying it was a result of improper maintenance on DME's part? In other words, they're not going to be responsible manufacturers, so was that too much? No. No, not too much. Okay. So good morning, Madam Chair. Good morning. Jason Brown, plant manager at the Denton Energy Center. Great questions, Mr. Beck. The warranty on the starting air compressors are a three-year warranty from install. Yeah. Okay. In other markets, it's definitely pretty par for course for instrument air compressors. They were out of warranty in 2020. Was it a part failure, or? It was. It was a main component failure. So what actually happened to the instrument or the start air compressor was a piston seizure. It's a reciprocating compressor, a piston seizure, it seized and pushed the piston and jugged the liner totally off of their compressor. And then as it was coasting down, did the same thing to the other side from imbalance. Okay. We don't have insurance to cover that, or is that covered? We do have insurance. Our equipment insurance could cover it if the deductible was about the same. So it's do you want to go with going to insurance claim and raising your premiums throughout the lifespan, or do you want to replace the component itself? The OEM touching on the maintenance aspect of it, we did bring in the OEM to evaluate it. They actually still have the complete unit doing a root cause analysis report on it. At this time, it appears to be just a equipment manufacturer failure. Whether they'll warranty that, they could. If it's a component material defect, any of that kind of nature that was not a maintenance aspect. The maintenance on that compressor is pretty minimal. Change the oil, change the air filter. That was done probably four months prior to. That's an annual based maintenance interval, 1,000 hours or a year. So far right now, we're waiting on the RCA to come back. We had to do a purchase order to be able to get the air compressor coming into us, which was actually just installed here recently. The other aspect to this was rental of equipment. So start air compressors, pretty vital piece of equipment for us. We can't start the units without it, and having only one leaves us in a real vulnerable state. Is this a part that we, and due to the supply chain problem, that we would want to keep in stock in the event that it happens, and if so, where are we at with that? Not a complete unit. I wouldn't recommend a complete unit. Catastrophic failure is pretty rare on something of this nature. A motor, spare motor, yes. During this event, we actually had to take the motor off of that one and put on the other one because it was about to fail. Motor maintenance is 40,000 hours, shouldn't be anywhere near, but the cycles on the equipment, the heat of the equipment, everything's needed to be adjusted a little bit. Okay. Thank you, Jason. Yes, sir. Thank you. Okay. Are you going to deal with H? No. Yeah, H? No. No, sir. Okay. Not me. I have some more questions. Okay. Sorry. Howdy. Howdy. So what's the life expectancy of these? So we're at what, four or five years right now, right? Four or five years right now. Basically it's just like the engines or any other reciprocating engine type with a piston in the sleeve. It's all repairable parts unless you damage the actual crank case or the crank, then you're replacing components. How long did we expect it to last? Typically, probably 17 years, 20 years. So how do we have such a major failure so relatively quickly? That seems a little... Could be a bore issue with a piston seizure, just like in your car. If you have overheating issues, expansion, contraction, it could have been a little bit of bore size difference in there. Could be a number of... I guess they're figuring out still? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. And then if you could run through the impact of this again. So we have already leased a second one that was just installed, you said? Correct. So we had a backup air compressor on site for our black start testing. So the first component of this was holding over that black start or that temporary compressor that we had as an in case. So we held it over $24,000 over the period of new coming in. Okay. In between the manufacturer, the OEM manufacturer and their representative brought in a temporary air compressor so we could get rid of the other $24,000 expense. So we had a temporary air compressor on site while they were building our actual replacement. The replacement just showed up last week. Everything's operating normally now? Yes, sir. Okay. Good deal. That's all I have. Okay. Move approval. Motion? Move to approve. Okay. Mr. Beck approved. Second? Second. Okay. Thank you. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Same sign. Thank you. And now H. Good morning. Good morning. Craig Stastny. I'm line manager for constructions, DMV. Hi, Craig. A little item popped out at me that it was something that I asked a question about several months ago, so I just wanted to make sure, and this is in no way to try and be a gotcha thing, but directional boring surfaces to install underground utilities will be performed among other things overhead to underground conversion projects. So I'm assuming that's line posts along the street. That's where our overhead lines come in to the underground cable. Okay. So it's the- That's overhead to underground. Okay. And we would be removing the posts that hold those above ground lines, right? In some instances, I mean, I'm not following your question. Well, what I asked before months ago is, you know, we were having a lot of problems with the above ground lines because they are above ground, they're susceptible to extra weather, terrorist attacks, all that sort of thing. And I asked, you know, would the city be, you know, consider, you know, getting everything underground or it's more secure, and the answer at that time, which is logical, it would be cost prohibitive to do that. So now part of this item wants to do what it sounded like wants to do some of that. And that's what I'm asking, I guess, if we're going to, as it says, we're going to locate, relocate utilities overhead to underground. It's going to be an underground conversion, excuse me. Does this entail removing all of the infrastructure of the above ground where we're putting underground? In certain jobs, yes. So like what they'll do is they'll come in and put the overhead underground, and the boring contract is what that's for, where it's not feasible to open cut, to put the lines underground into conduit. Okay. So, Mr. Beck, so this contract is kind of a general contract, but we do have some very specific projects, and you're exactly right, some of those projects that were undergrounding are for reliability purposes. Others are just to address a variety of different issues. And so there's not anything specifically that we're intending for this particular contract other than as a general services contract that we've always had and we're going to use as needed. Okay. So then as we progress towards the future and the need arises, we will start doing more underground lines as opposed to above ground. So all new subdivisions, all new areas are all undergrounded. It's the existing areas that we will identify certain areas that need to be undergrounded and we'll address those kind of on a case-by-case basis. Okay. Okay. Great. Thank you. Sorry, I didn't understand your question. And I did a terrible job laying it out there to you, so. That's all right. No problem. Okay. Any other questions? Approval? Would someone make a motion? Sure. Mr. Jump. Second. Mr. Beck. Any other discussion? All in favor, say aye. I oppose, same sign. Thank you very much. Thank you for that. Okay. Now we'll move into the items for individual consideration. The first is the PB-22190, consider approval of the October 24th minutes. Does everyone have an opportunity? Yes. Okay. So moved. Second? Sure. Any discussion? All in favor? Discussion? No. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Same sign. Thank you. Okay. PUB-22182, consider recommending adoption of an ordinance of the City of Denton, a Texas home rule municipal corporation, authorizing the city manager to execute a construction manager at risk contract with McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. for construction phase services for Southeast Denton package B improvements for the capital projects department, providing for the expenditure of funds therefore, and providing an effective date, RFQ7714, awarding to McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. in a not to exceed amount of $21,582,378. All right. Good morning board members. My name is Seth Garcia. I'm a program manager with Capital Projects. I do have a brief presentation for you for the construction manager at risk construction phase contract for Southeast Denton package B. So for a quick overview of the scope. So Southeast Denton package B is the area shaded in green that you can see here. This is our first horizontal construction manager at risk project that we're doing in the City of Denton. It's roughly 49 roadway segments or 21,000 linear feet of roadway. We have 16,000 linear feet of water main that we're going to be replacing, and just over 7,000 linear feet of wastewater main. We've also identified with this project several areas that need ADA compliance. So with those areas, we're replacing those sidewalk ramps, as well as adding some sidewalk connectivity. So we're filling some gaps in these areas as well to connect sidewalks. Really quickly, while you have the map up. Yes, sir. There isn't a legend on the map. So yellow is pavement. Correct. So yellow is pavement. The dotted blue is water main replacement, and the hash kind of red marks is wastewater replacement. And the pink or purple in the center there? So the area in the center is actually Southeast Denton package A. That's under construction right now. That was awarded back in April as a CSP project. Okay. So not the pink, just the green. Correct. Just the area in green. So briefly just to walk through the GMP process. So Southeast Denton package B was separated into five major work categories. Those consist of asphalt paving, earthwork and demo, concrete flatwork, traffic control, and our underground utilities. Those were all put together into individual packages and bid by McCarthy building companies to the public. McCarthy then held individual interviews with the top ranking firms and selected what they thought was the best value and then brought those selections to the city to make sure we concurred. From that, McCarthy took all of those pricings, put it into a guaranteed maximum price, and then added their general conditions costs, their bonds and insurance requirements, the CMAR contingency, which we'll cover, and their overall contractor's fee. So these next few slides actually break down those costs we just discussed. So here you can see the five major work packages and what the total cost came in. For the solicitation, we actually did like individual units of measure. Those are then converted to lump sums for those individual packages to form this total GMP. On the right there in the comments, you can see the company that was selected for each work package. The second slide just shows the different rates that were used to calculate the general conditions, the insurance, the 3% construction contingency that is within the GMP. That is for the CMAR's use. And then their construction fee of 6.95%, which was negotiated through the RFP stage when we first brought on the CMAR. Lastly, you'll see there at the very bottom the performance and payment bond at 0.71% for the total GMP value of $21,014,409. Yes, sir. - Thank you. One more question. On this process, the construction manager at risk selects the bid, like interviews and selects the bids. - Correct. - Does the city see all of the bids or just the final selected? - Yeah. So when they actually bid it, they require the contractor to submit two copies. One comes to myself, one goes to their office. We actually, myself, sat on the interviews and listened to all the responses where they went through verifying scopes. They then put all those recommendations for each individual work package, and we had a sit down meeting with our collaboration team, myself, the design engineer, and the CMAR, and we walked through each of the top ranking bids to make sure we all concurred with the contractor that was selected. - And on these fees, general conditions, is that a contingency based on if conditions are bad or is that built in? - No, so the general conditions fee is actually for kind of their home office and overhead. So their project management staff, something that's not, has a direct hour bill rate, their actual job trailer on site, those are all built into that general conditions cost. - And so this is the, what is it, what's the GMP? - Guaranteed Maximum Price. - Guaranteed Maximum Price? - Correct. - Is there any chance, apart from the contingency, that it will be less than the guaranteed maximum or is it just basically a fixed? - Yeah, so this is a fixed lump sum, so they receive 100% of the proceeds after this. So it's not a cost plus fee, we actually did this all as a complete lump sum. So 21 million minus any owner-directed changes is what the contractor will receive for the work. - Okay, so, okay, I was curious, because it said like guaranteed maximum, does that mean there's a minimum? Is there a range? Is there, some of these fees are contingent? So, but basically this is like a fixed price, 21 million. - Yes, sir. That is it. - Thank you. - So quickly for the project schedule, our design approval was back in October of 2021. We then approved the CMAR in December of 2021. That gave us about nine months to design this project. We are planning to issue a notice to proceed for construction with y'all's approval in January of 2023. And we are estimating this project to be construction complete by early quarter three, 2024. So roughly about a 16, 18 month construction timeframe. So with that, staff recommends approval of the CMAR contract with McCarthy's Building Company for the total GMP amount of 21 million plus a 3% owner's contingency of just over 567,000 for the total contract of 21,582,378. And I'm happy to answer any questions. - Is there a motion? Mr. Beck moves approval. Second? Mr. Jump second. Any other questions? All in favor say aye. - Aye. - Opposed? Same sign. Thank you very much. - Thank y'all. All right, for item C for individual consideration, PUB 22-191, management reports, future agenda items. - So Madam Chair and members of the PUB, so still the same items that we've had on here for you. Tentatively, we have scheduled on January 9th an update on the DME budget and rates discussion. Again, that date's still a little contingent, just want to make sure that you're aware of that. And then we're still scheduled to bring the Greensense program to you on January 23rd, barring any other issues that may come up. So with that, we're happy to answer any questions or if there's anything else that you'd like to see here in the next year, happy to list them out for you. - Well, we're not seeing any coming forth today. So onto business action items. Nothing there. Okay. Concluding items. Is that to be read? Okay, is there anything for concluding items? - I move adjournment. - Is there a second? - Second. - Second. All in favor? Aye. All right. Opposed? Same sign. - Good job. - Thank you very much.