University Place opens bids for school crosswalk safety project; staff to verify totals and seek state concurrence

Jack Ecklund, director of public works for University Place, opened a virtual bid opening for the University Place School crosswalk safety improvement project and read aloud the bid packets submitted by contractors.

Ecklund said bidders should use the platform’s Q&A feature to ask questions and that each opened bid and its dollar amount would be posted there. He warned of a short delay between the video feed and chat on the city’s new platform and invited anyone who believes their submission is missing to notify staff so IT can check for hung or quarantined emails.

Ecklund read the submitted packages and announced totals as shown in the bid documents: Midway Underground, $3,027,780.00; Puget Paving, $2,744,402.73; Northwest Cascade, $2,963,529.00; Secanti, $2,000,001.55 (transcript contains minor garbling); Sound Pacific, $2,102,009.67; and RW Scott, approximately $2,255,517.00 (transcript numeric phrasing was unclear). “We will be going through all the documents, make double checking everything is submitted, and going through the bid tabs, checking the math, and so forth,” Ecklund said.

A city staff member, Britney Evans, said bid tabs should be posted to the city website the following morning on the engineering projects page so bidders can review detailed tabulations. Ecklund added that the project is grant-funded and will require state concurrence before an award can be made; he said the award would likely go to council for approval and could appear as early as the next Monday meeting but is more likely to be scheduled for the first meeting in April.

Ecklund closed the bid opening by thanking attendees and reiterating that staff will verify bids, correct any errors caught in filters, and post official bid tabs online. The city will announce the recommended low bidder and next procedural steps after that review.