By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
It’s possible that construction could begin on a justice center for Barren County in early September, if all the parties involved keep to a strict schedule that has been drafted, according to the person supervising the construction management for the court facility.
Architect Brian Estep, on behalf of the design team, told the project development board Wednesday he didn’t have much to update this time, based on the schedule.
“So no update, then, on time; everything’s still the same?” asked Barren County Judge-Executive Jamie Bewley Byrd, who chairs the board, after brief comments on some permitting details.
“We’re working in conjunction with Alliance and a couple folks at the [Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts] to put a schedule together that might help a little bit to outline what some of the steps are between us turning over construction documents and then the actual time that construction starts. There’s a lot of little small moving parts between those two milestones, so we’re working on putting that together, just kind of for everybody’s benefit, to see what needs to happen when,” Estep said.
He had said at the April 30 PDB meeting that the design team was scheduled to have those completed construction documents delivered to the construction manager by May 21.
Tommy Gumm, CEO of Alliance Corp., which was hired for construction management on the job, added that they were working on what he was calling a bidding schedule, “which takes us from the point where we get the documents from the architectural firms and we take it over at that point, start doing our things, [getting] it out to bid and working with AOC on approvals.”
He said they would be getting together with the architects and AOC to produce that.
“I’ll just go ahead and say the preliminary document that we have put together that I have shared with [an AOC representative] shows the possibility of us being able to start construction in the first of September, so if we can all kind of hold to our dates …,” Gumm said.
He noted there are several “moving parts,” including those having to do with the financing of the project.
“But we will try to refine that and get that to everybody,” he said. “I know everybody’s anxious to see where we are and be able to tell everybody what our future plans are, so hopefully we’ll be able to have that soon.”
This discussion comes on the heels of frustrations voiced at the last meeting about the slow rate of progress.
Gumm said he had received approval Tuesday for two change orders, one having to do with unsuitable soil and the other an additional stormwater line, both of which had been mentioned at the previous meeting.
“We’ve notified the contractor, and so there will be a remobilization for the storm sewer contractor,” he said, adding that the contractor dealing with the soil has already been working every day it hasn’t been rainy or too muddy. “They have already started excavating the unsatisfactory materials.”
The engineering firm AEI is on site monitoring that activity and directing the contractor as to when to stop or go farther, he said.
The site is along the 300 block of West Main Street, extending north past West Water Street to West Front Street, in Glasgow.
“We have one other thing that came up …,” Gumm said. “The water company made a suggestion that while they’re putting that new line in, that there is a fire hydrant that’s in the way of our construction roadway and another tap that’s required.”
He said the municipally owned utility had agreed to do that additional work without charging for labor, only charging for the material.
“It’s not a huge amount. It’s $15,000. I mean – I guess I don’t want to quantify what’s huge and what’s not – but in comparison to other things, that’s not a huge amount to get that work done now rather than having to go through paying a contractor the labor on this during the next phase, so we have that moving forward,” Gumm said. “That, hopefully, will be our last change order on this phase.”
As usual, this second-Wednesday meeting took place primarily via Zoom, with live attendance possible in Circuit Judge John T. Alexander’s courtroom in the Barren County Courthouse. The next regular meeting – on the last Wednesday of the month – is primarily in person and takes place in Fiscal Court Chambers on the third floor of the Barren County Government Center, 117 N. Public Square, Glasgow.
Comments