Council awards $1.23 million contract for Badger meters to complete AMI rollout, council says project ahead of schedule

The Sugar Land City Council voted 7-0 to authorize a $1,234,350 contract with Accurate Utility Supply LLC, using the BuyBoard cooperative contract No. 71723, to purchase Badger water meters needed to finish the city’s Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) improvements project.

Trevor Serfas, the utilities field operations manager, updated council that the AMI program — which began installations in October of the prior year — had reached about 31,123 installs, covering roughly 79% of city water meters (both residential and commercial). He said about 13,000 installs were register retrofits and about 17,000 were full meter replacements; the remaining residential work focuses on Greatwood and First Colony, after which crews will finish irrigation and large commercial meters.

Serfas said the project team is collecting GPS locations for every meter and working with the customer-portal vendor (Vertex) to prepare a resident portal scheduled for release in Q1 of next year. He noted that AMI data helped the city avoid estimated bills immediately after Hurricane Beryl and that the installation contractor Bridal Valves Inc. has been efficient with a very low rework rate.

Councilmembers asked about transmission frequency (Serfas: hourly reads consolidated in six-hour transmissions) and about customer complaints of higher bills after meter replacement; staff said many of those calls were linked to seasonal irrigation or billing-cycle timing rather than meter error and that staff follows up with inspections and billing-history checks.

Council approved the contract 7-0. Staff said a forthcoming change order will cover remaining services needed to complete installations.