The Springfield City Council approved an assortment of improvements for East Battlefield Road at its June 26 meeting, including signal replacements, a connection to the Galloway Creek Greenway Trail and a repaving of roadway and sidewalks.
The unanimous passage of the Battlefield corridor improvements approved the plans and specifications of the projects, as well as accepted the sole bid at $1,394,971.04, which was 25 percent over the engineer’s estimate.
Nonetheless, Public Works recommended acceptance of the bid, with components of the project supporting City Council priorities such as quality of place, public safety and economic vitality.
Construction set to begin this summer, with lane closures expected
While dubbed in the council bill as “Battlefield Corridor Improvements — Lone Pine to Luster,” some improvements stretch beyond those intersections.
The project includes a connection to the Galloway Creek Greenway Trail from Lone Pine Avenue, between the Half A Hill shopping center and the Lone Pine Recycling Center, which Public Works Director Dan Smith called “a very nice piece of the project.”
Battlefield Road itself will see some maintenance from Glenstone Avenue to Lone Pine, in areas where the pavement is in worse condition, not necessarily across the whole stretch of road. Additionally, new sidewalk will be added along Lone Pine, allowing people on the Galloway trail to cross Battlefield when the tunnel under it is flooded.
Paula Brookshire, a principal engineer with Public Works, described the intersection improvements at Battlefield and Lone Pine as “geometric changes,” with new traffic signals, pedestrian crossings, added turn lanes and ADA features included to improve and expand traffic capacity. The intersection at Battlefield and Luster will get new traffic signals.
While these were initially separate projects, they were combined to minimize impact on traffic.
Springfield-based Hartman and Company, the contractor awarded the bid, will have 150 days to complete the project. Brookshire anticipates work on the project to begin in mid-July.
Brookshire said the improvements will prompt some lane closures as needed, but that, but they will attempt to minimize its impact on traffic through advance notice and overnight work.
High bid attributed to low estimate, inflation
At nearly $1.4 million, the sole bid from Hartman and Company was 25.7 percent above the engineer’s estimate of $1,109,874.18
Smith told council members at the June 5 meeting that the estimate was made fairly recently, as it is typically made toward the end of the design phase.
After only getting the one bid, Smith said that they checked with their typical contractors to understand why they didn’t bid on the project. Similarly to a sentiment expressed recently by the Greene County Highway Department as they sought bids for a trio of bridge repairs, Smith said they were told that “there's just so much work out there that they just didn't have the capacity to do that.”
Smith attributed the engineer’s underestimate of the cost of the project to inflation and that they were low in their estimate of the concrete pavement repairs on Battlefield.
“At the last [Ozarks Transportation Organization] board meeting, MoDOT was talking about what they're seeing across the state and in the urbanized areas, which includes Springfield. Over the past 12 months — they're seeing about 28 percent increase in the prices that they're paying,” Smith told council members. “So this fits within that range of what MoDOT is seeing, so it's that unfortunate continuance of inflation, and construction inflation has been higher than general inflation, it seems.”
An attempt to rebid the project could result in delaying a part of the project until the next construction season, according to the bill’s explanation.
“I think also, it's just a matter of, there's so much work for roadway contractors out there right now that they have to decide what's what's worth bidding on and what's not,” Brookshire said.
Councilmember inquires about application of recent ballot measure regarding bids
In April, Springfield voters approved a change to the city charter to streamline contracting and bidding procedures.
The ballot language read:
“Shall Section 2.16(25) of the Springfield City Charter be amended to authorize that an ordinance approving acceptance of a bid and entry into contract with the successful bidder may be passed at the City Council meeting at which it is introduced?”
The ballot measure’s passage gives the City Council flexibility in letting certain contracts out to bid and awarding them to contractors, by allowing it to start exercising options to award contracts with a single bill reading at a single meeting, rather than reading a bill twice over a period of two meetings, with two or three weeks’ time in between.
“Reducing the amount of time might increase the number of vendors who are willing to bid on our contracts, because they have to make less of a commitment of time — how long to hold their bid open,” Springfield City Attorney Rhonda Lewsader previously said.
However, Council Bill 2023-152, the Battlefield corridor project, came before the City Council twice. It was first read on June 5, and voted on on June 26.
Zone 1 Councilmember Monica Horton asked on June 5 if the fact that the project only had one bid impacted how many times the bill would be read, and if city staff simply used discretion in determining at what point the contract would be voted on.
“Right now, we're looking at that option for the one reading and putting together some guidelines to give us some guidance on when we would bring something forward for a one reading or two reading,” Smith said. “Hopefully we'll have something put together on that soon.”
