MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Bids for the multi-million dollar upgrade of the Morgantown Utility Board Cheat Lake Wastewater Treatment Plant have been negotiated and the project is expected to get underway soon.
The project went out for bid when the market was flooded with federal relief dollars for utility upgrade projects, and General Manager Mike McNulty expressed concern that the amount of work out for bid could force market prices up.
“The low bid was submitted by Mele Mele and Sons in the amount of $39,630,000; however, the engineer’s estimate, including contingency, was $30,859,400,” McNulty said.
When bids did come in well above the estimate, McNulty and staff met with the West Virginia Water Development Authority and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection for advice or even additional grant funding for the project.
“Their suggestion was we needed to go back and look at the project to see what we could take out through the value engineering process where we look at all different aspects of the project to save money,” McNulty said.
That resulted in several meetings with Mele to look at every aspect of the project. The first item removed was the more than $2 million Whites Run Lift Station portion of the project. Later, McNulty said they were able to whittle the project down to $36,038,742 after removing several items in addition to the life station.
“We finally have been able to bring the project down where we could bring it back to the West Virginia Water Development Authority, and they agreed to provide us with another $1.3 million in American Rescue Plan grant dollars,” McNulty said.
The final cost breakdown for the project is:
$33,800,000 in the form of a loan from DEP Clean Water State Revolving Fund
$ 8,050,000 in grants from the West Virginia Water Development Authority
$ 500,000 in a grant from the DEP Water Protection fund
$ 165,000 in grants from West Virginia Infrastructure and Jobs Development Council
$ 3,535,147 is share MUB will pay.
McNulty is confident that some of the subtractions will be added back to the project as actual costs are incurred.
“We have a good project, and we think some of the items we may be able to get back into the project because we do have contingency dollars,” McNulty said.
For Mele & Mele & Sons, this will be the first project with MUB. Assistant General Manager Rich Rogers said the multiple meetings allowed them to understand the performance history of the company and their ability to complete the work.
“It’s clear they’ve done this size of project countless times, and maybe even bigger projects,” Rogers said. “So, we were comfortable after receiving that information.”