By Eric Harold
In a special meeting held on Monday, March 25, the South O’Brien School Board accepted bids from two companies for its facility improvements projects in Paullina and Primghar.
A total of two bids were submitted by the deadline of March 12 for improvements to the elementary building in Primghar, and three by March 19 for the Paullina renovations. One factor that Bayse felt limited the number of bids submitted was the lack of subcontractors in the local area.
All bids for the work at both locations came in higher than the estimated cost. The board accepted the lowest bid for the elementary building improvements of $2,030,000.00 from H&R Construction of South Sioux City, NE, which exceeded the estimated cost of the project at $1,960,047.00. The motion to accept this bid was made by Sue, and seconded by John
The other bids submitted were from Wiltgen Bros. Construction in LeMars at $2,341,000.00, and Haselhoff Construction of Cherokee at $2,085,500.00.
For the work at the junior high/high school building and district administration renovations in Paullina, the board voted to accept a combined base bid of $24,200,000.00 from Wiltgen Bros. Construction over a bid of $25,080,000.00 from Nelson Commercial Construction of Sioux City.
Matt Bayse, architect with FEH Design of Sioux City which is consulting the district, shared one bit of reassuring news in light of the submitted bids being over the budgeted amount by roughly $700,000 for the Paullina project. He said that the second bidder had the costs of an electrical subcontractor overestimated by about $650,000, indicating that Wiltgen’s bid was probably “the right one.”
Bayse said he was happy with the two submitted bids for Paullina despite them being over budget, as the costs for all desired aspects of the project were covered. At being over $750,000 for the Paullina renovations with costs approaching $25,000,000, he felt “that was pretty good too.”
“We’re going to get to do all of it if you would like to,” he said. “The whole list is in there.”
Bayse said the initial work will begin in a couple of weeks. Superintendent Wade Riley said the contractors have indicated their completion dates match those set by FEH.
FEH and district administrators will meet with the contractors at the sites on April 10.
“Everything is pretty much ready to go in Primghar,” Riley said. “We’re just waiting for nice weather so we’ll have somewhere for our physical education classes.”