MoDOT awards repair contracts for next year

The Missouri Department of Transportation recently awarded Collins & Hermann Inc. of St. Louis two contracts for guard rail and guard cable work in its Southeast District, which encompasses Poplar Bluff, Dexter and other municipalities.

The contracts, one worth $1.75 million and the other $309,000, will pay for guard rail and cable repairs as need arises over the next year.

“The big thing is for the most part, we have specific contracts that fix specific problems on our system, but we also have these contracts we call Job Order Contracts,” said MoDOT Southeast District Area Engineer Dave Wyman. “We don’t really know exactly where the problems are going to be, but we try to set aside some money.”

Each spring, Wyman said, MoDOT goes through a bidding process “to get a good unit price, so that when issues appear, we can call the contractor and tell them we need a repair.”

The latest contracts, he said, will cover repairs from July through June of next year.

Essentially, he said, the contracts are money set aside to pay for future problems, so repairs can be done in a timely manner.

“It lets us have that money already in place, so that we can respond quickly and try to keep the road safe and in good condition for everybody that’s driving on it,” Wyman explained.

The guard rails and cables, he said, “are a safety device, and they get damaged, and we want to have them repaired as quickly as possible, so we can run those repairs through this contract.”

Many times, Wyman said, the repairs can be calculated and billed back to the insurance company for the driver that actually did the damage.

“From a contracting standpoint, it really gives us a lot of flexibility because we know these problems are going to show up, we just don’t know exactly when or where,” Wyman added.

He described the contracts for future, short-notice repair work as a balance.

“It’s kind of a balance. We can’t give exact times and locations, so unit prices are actually a little bit higher than they would be for a true defined project scope,” he said.

Those pre-defined projects typically can take three to four months just to get off the ground.

These repair contracts, Wyman said, provide “a balance of response time and still get good quality work, and also have a good equitable bidding system for all contractors that want to bid on that.

“It’s a balance of having a good response and trying to be good stewards of the money.”