City staff briefed the Ames City Council on Aug. 5 about the next-phase design contract for a proposed new animal shelter on Dayton Road. The city retained Envision Architecture earlier to develop conceptual design and is now prepared to move into schematic design, design development and construction documents.
Staff presented a draft professional-services agreement and said several council members and staff had submitted edits after receiving the draft. The most significant concern was contractual language that would have paid the architect to design approximately $1 million of additive alternates (options such as additional features) and would still pay a substantial portion of that fee even if bids did not allow the city to proceed with the alternates. Council members said they preferred focusing the contract on the project that fits the funding the city expects to have and leaving more limited alternates as discrete, lower-cost tasks so design fees are spent on the core deliverables that will be constructed.
Council instruction
Council directed staff to work with Envision to revise the scope and fee to remove or scale back the full $1 million in alternates included in the draft agreement, to reflect a design scope that aligns with the city’s currently expected funding level, and to return a revised contract for council approval. Staff also indicated several other mostly editorial changes were requested in the afternoon and would be handled in the revised draft.
Why it matters
The animal shelter project is an example of the city balancing design ambitions and budget. Council’s request aims to ensure public money pays for deliverables that match expected construction funding and minimizes the risk of paying full design fees for options that may never be funded.
What’s next
Staff will revise the Envision contract scope and fee, return a redlined agreement for council consideration and bring an updated schedule for schematic design through construction-document phases.