Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Stormwater Contracts topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
DuPage County panel approves contract increases for Saint Joseph’s Creek drainage after field‑condition explanation
Summary
DuPage County stormwater committee approved two change orders to Saint Joseph’s Creek condominium drainage contracts after staff explained unforeseen footing and soil conditions encountered during excavation; motions carried unanimously.
DuPage County’s Stormwater Committee on Tuesday approved two contract amendments for the Saint Joseph’s Creek condominium drainage project after staff said construction crews encountered existing building footings and soil conditions that were not apparent during design.
The committee voted to increase one contract by $59,000 and a second contract by $70,100 after members asked why the costs were rising. The motions carried with members voting “Aye.”
The issue was raised by Member Desart, who asked why the conditions were not identified before bids were accepted. “I always have concern that, whenever I see ‘not foreseeable,’ it makes me wonder if they were the low bid only to increase the cost later,” Desart said. She asked whether engineers could have discovered the conditions in advance.
Staff member Sarah responded that the site was adjacent to occupied residential buildings and that original construction plans did not show footing width, depth or surrounding soil type. “When we got into construction and got that excavation to where we could see the footings and the soil types surrounding those footings, we had to actually make the footing for our floodgates more robust than what was originally designed,” Sarah said. She added the team had avoided invasive soil sampling before excavation to limit disturbance next to the buildings.
Committee members accepted that explanation and approved both amendments. The committee recorded the votes with the chair calling for “All in favor?” and receiving unanimous “Aye” responses; no roll‑call vote with named tallies was recorded in the transcript.
The committee also discussed the broader practice of handling change orders for field conditions and noted that some conditions cannot be fully known until excavation is underway in developed areas. No additional analysis or policy change on change orders was directed at the meeting.
The Saint Joseph’s Creek items were presented as amendments to earlier board resolutions; the construction contractor names and final adjusted contract totals were discussed during the meeting but the transcript contains inconsistent numerics for the post‑change totals, so final contract amounts are not specified in this article.
