QVMC commissioners award materials contracts

QUINCY — Quincy Valley Medical Center commissioners awarded about $4.57 million in contracts for materials for the new Quincy hospital in a special meeting Wednesday. It was the second of three contracts for construction.

“The last approval that we’ll go through is for the full (guaranteed maximum price), and that is going to be next month,” said Kayla Van Lieshout of the Klosh Group, a consultant on the project. “We anticipate taking that to the Oct. 23 board meeting for approval.”

Officials at Graham Construction, the project general contractor, are updating material costs now, she said. The company did the same thing for the package approved Wednesday, and the result was some components got cheaper, and some got more expensive.

The second award package included the concrete and steel that will be used in construction, the fire sprinklers and the elevator design and materials. The steel will cost about $1.75 million, and the concrete about $1.27 million. The elevator will cost about $500,000, and the fire sprinklers about $300,000.

Abram Jenks of the Klosh Group said the cost of the elevators increased from the earlier estimate made in June. Joe Kunkel, consultant and the project manager, said consultants think that cost will come down, but wanted to ensure there was enough money to pay for it if it didn’t. Jenks said the cost of sections of the fire suppression system increased also - not the cost of the fire sprinklers themselves, which went down, but other parts of the system.

Van Lieshout said the difference between prices that went up and prices that came down is projected to be about $115,000 higher than the project budget.

“But there are other items that are still getting analyzed that could balance some of that out,” she said. “It’s still early in the process.”

Jenks said that current estimates have the construction portion of the project at about $100,000 to $200,000 over the budget by the time all three phases are awarded. But there’s more than enough in the contingency allowance for that, he said.

“We’re sitting at $3.3 million in contingency,” Jenks said.

Kunkel said construction is about three weeks away.

“We met with the city today and we’ll start being on site on the second of October,” he said

“Fences will go up sometime that week or the week after,” Jenks said.

Total project cost is still $55.65 million, which includes a hydrotherapy pool and a room for infusion therapy, which added about $650,000 to the cost. Those will be paid for out of interest earned from the construction bonds.

Cheryl Schweizer may be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.