Vero Beach staff outline timeline and rising cost for new water reclamation facility

Rob Bolton, a city staff member, told the Vero Beach City Council the city is moving forward with building a new water reclamation facility and has shifted to a construction-manager-at-risk (CMAR) delivery method to reduce unknown cost risk and improve coordination between engineer, contractor and subcontractors.

The update explained why the city chose to build a new facility rather than retrofit the existing plant or partner with the county: retrofitting on the constrained existing site posed operational complexity, while county capacity and pipeline costs made partnering more expensive. “We will get better treatment if we construct our own, and that’s the path that we took,” Bolton said.

Bolton said consultants and contractor Wharton Smith completed about 60–90% of design work and that bid advertising and subcontractor site visits are scheduled in the coming weeks. The team expects receipt of CMAR bids in early March and hoped to return a guaranteed maximum price (GMP) recommendation to council by April 22. If the procurement schedule holds, construction would begin in mid‑2025 and extend roughly 30 months, putting substantial completion in 2027 and project…