Michigan County Awards $32.7M Sewer Construction Contract

The Macomb Interceptor Drain Drainage District Board has awarded a construction contract, worth $32,710,583, to Dan’s Excavating of Shelby Township to repair the collapsed sewer interceptor along 15 Mile Road in Fraser. The board voted to approve the contract on Monday, March 13, 2017.

The project includes two major pieces of work:

•   Excavating a shaft roughly 300 feet long, 30 feet wide and 60 feet deep.
•   Replacing the collapsed section of the 11-foot diameter pipe.

“I feel very confident in this contract being awarded to Dan’s,” said Candice S. Miller, the Macomb County Public Works Commissioner and one of three drain board members who voted unanimously on the contract award. “Not only are they a local company with a stellar reputation for their work, but their bid was put under scrutiny by a team of engineers and financial experts who conducted an exhaustive evaluation and they unanimously endorsed Dan’s bid.”

The evaluation team, made up of nine people from the Office of Public Works and several consulting firms, reviewed the contracts based on price, work schedule and the work history of each of the five firms who bid on the contract. Dan’s bid was lowest in terms of cost and ranked first on overall score based on the three factors.

“This bid was awarded after thorough review, done in a public meeting and with the leaders of the impacted communities of this project invited to be in the room while the bid was discussed and voted upon,” Miller said. “Our mission in Public Works is clean water and clean government and this contract process definitely speaks to the clean government aspect of what we do.”

The MIDD board is made up of Miller, who serves as the chairman of the MIDD board, Bob Smith, the chairman of the Macomb County Board of Commissioners, and Veronica Klinefelt, the chairman of the Board of Commissioners’ Finance Committee.

Miller stated that Dan’s turned in a bid that anticipates finishing the project about 15 days earlier than what the Public Works Office had anticipated – a factor that could save as much as $70,000 per day in the project.

The board also approved the following:

•  Approximately $8 million for work completed to date for the building of the bypass system, which carries sewage around the collapsed interceptor. This bypass was necessary to allow the collapsed portion to be replaced.
•  Approximately $1.5 million to Red Zone Robotics, a Pennsylvania­based company that will conduct an inspection of the interior and exterior of the roughly $17 miles of MIDD pipes and support structures that exist in Macomb County. This inspection, to be conducted in the spring and summer, will lead to a recommendation on what additional preventative maintenance work should be conducted in the MIDD system.
•  Funding to purchase and demolish three homes that were damaged when the sewer interceptor collapsed on Christmas Eve and created a sinkhole along 15 Mile Road.

Bids for repairing and repaving 15 Mile Road will be requested at a future date, with the road repaving expected to happen in the late fall of this year.