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Cowlitz County public works selects vendor to add remote reading to existing water meters; award to return to board
Summary
Public Works staff selected an RFP respondent to add automated remote-reading to many county water meters using ARPA funds; award paperwork will return to the Board with final unit pricing.
Cowlitz County Public Works announced it has selected a vendor in an October request-for-proposals to add automated remote reading to its water meter system, a project funded in part with federal ARPA dollars.
The county received board approval to use up to $550,000 in ARPA direct qualification funds for a meter replacement and remote-reading project, Savannah Clement, Public Works, told commissioners. Clement said the selected vendor can add remote-reading radio heads (AMR) to many of the county's existing meters, avoiding replacement of all 1,300 meters and lowering the final award amount.
The choice follows interviews with the two top-scoring firms; Clement said the selected vendor scored higher largely because it can retrofit recent meters rather than require full meter replacement. "It'll allow us to remove that third party reading agency," Clement said, adding the county expects about $18,000 in annual savings by discontinuing third-party manual reads. The county also hopes improved meters will give customers near-real-time consumption data and faster leak detection.
Public Works staff estimated a full replacement proposal priced at about $425,000 but told the board the eventual contract will be lower because the county will not purchase new meters for every service. Travis, a county water-sewer technician who led project work, demonstrated meter heads the county can swap to enable remote reads and estimated roughly "a 100 or so" of the newer meter tops are already in the ground; the remainder could be retrofitted with radio heads.
Clement said warranties offered by the vendor include a 10-year battery warranty and a 20-year meter warranty. She said staff plan to present the formal award and the contract with unit pricing to the Board at its next regular meeting for approval.
The county also plans in-house work to replace damaged meter boxes and standardize meter sets to speed future maintenance, Clement added. Commissioners asked about whether customers could be charged unexpectedly when manual reads stop; Clement said the county has handled prior reading errors by issuing adjustments and not charging customers for erroneous third-party reads.
Staff will return with the contract pricing and the formal award for the Board to act on at the next meeting.
