Wellington staff recommends $2.1 million in contracts for Lift Station rehab; protest on smaller contract rejected

Village staff on Monday described recommendations to award two construction contracts and related construction-phase services for Lift Station Phase 3, a continued multi-year rehabilitation program for the village’s wastewater lift stations.

Miss Pance, presenting the utility consent item, said Wellington owns and operates 105 lift stations and that this phase focuses on two master stations: Lift Station 16, near the new Publix on Greenview Shores and Wellington Trace, and Lift Station 65, which serves the Wycliffe community. “This station rehabilitation proposes a new standby generator, complete replacement of the electrical and communication system, wet well rehab, piping upgrades, and site work,” Pance said of Lift Station 16, and added that replacing ductile iron influent piping there has been “a major driver for this project” after two emergency breaks in that line.

Staff recommended awarding the Lift Station 16 contract to Hinterland Construction in the amount of $1,664,500 plus an owner-controlled contingency of $160,000. For Lift Station 65, staff recommended awarding the contract to G3 Contracting for $479,820 plus an owner-controlled contingency of $40,000. Mac Roos was recommended for construction-phase services covering both stations for $164,900. Pance said the project is partially grant-funded; she identified roughly $540,000 in grant funding for standby generators for the two stations.

The consent item also included a proposed budget amendment to reassign capital funds: $445,000 from a storage-and-repump capital line and $390,000 in surplus from a recently approved South Shore Phase 2 project, for a total recommended reassignment of $835,000 to the Lift Station Phase 3 project.

Council staff and the village attorney also summarized the status of a bid protest filed by Hinterland Group regarding the smaller contract. Miss Cohen said the purchasing manager initially denied the protest and a subsequent appeal to the village manager was rejected because the protest did not comply with the village’s timelines and procedures. Cohen said an aggrieved bidder’s remaining remedy would be in circuit court. Council members noted that Hinterland is the recommended low bidder on the larger Lift Station 16 award while having protested the lower-value contract.

Staff characterized the awards as the product of multiple bid rounds and value-engineering; Pance said the project had been bid three times and that splitting the work into two contracts was intended to foster competition. No final council vote on the consent agenda appeared in the agenda-review discussion; staff said items will be on the formal meeting agenda for approval.

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If approved at the council meeting, the awards would fund urgent repairs and reliability improvements at two master lift stations and deploy grant-funded standby generators. Staff said the work will reduce the risk of future emergency pipe breaks and outages while adding resiliency for sites that have experienced repeated power loss.