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County approves new methods for school construction bids




Clyde RichertRichard Suter Photography

Clyde RichertRichard Suter Photography

As Robertson County continues to see growth, the possible need for new schools looms large in the coming years.

At their November meeting, the County Commission approved a new resolution that opens the door for more methods in hiring architects or general contractors in building schools.

The resolution, drafted by County Attorney Clyde Richert at the urging of the Buildings and Grounds Committee, rescinded a prior resolution from 2013 in which the only way schools could be built was through a hard bid method. This new resolution allows for additional building methods, such as negotiated or hybrid bids.

“This resolution is to do away with only using a hard bid,” Richert said. It doesn’t mean that that’s not what could happen on a particular project; that may well be how a school is built. But since 2013 that was the only way it could be built. And this opens it up to other ways of construction like we had prior to that time.”

While hard bids might cost less because you’re awarding the project to the lowest bidder, you may not be familiar with them, and they’re not part of the initial design process.

The benefit of a negotiated bid is the relationship developed between the project manager and the contractor. You can work with the same contractor for multiple projects over time. So, you know who they are and what you’re getting each time. And they’re part of the design process from the beginning.

“Construction business has changed a lot over the last few years and there have become a myriad of multiple ways that you can hire somebody to build anything. But as long as this previous resolution has been in effect, you had one vehicle, and you were going down one lane,” Richert said.

Past problems

The cause of the resolution in 2013 arose out of conflict-of-interest rules. The county is currently in a lawsuit with American Paper & Twine after a bid was made with them, despite an employee of theirs being on the school board. Although that employee wouldn’t have received any commission or compensation, the finance department was written up in an audit finding which prompted the lawsuit.

One member of the board was also a spouse that worked for another principal construction company the county used to build schools in the past. That spouse has since resigned from the school board.

In May of 2020 the Tennessee state legislature eliminated what statutes call indirect conflicts of interest. With this conflict now removed, it allows for the county commission and school board to consider alternatives they previously were restricted from doing.

A focus of debate between the county commissioners during the meeting was ensuring that future approval of new building projects, regardless of the bid method, was part of a collaborative effort between the county and school board, as well as the finance and budget committees.

Although the resolution was ultimately passed, several commissioners voiced concerns. Commissioner Ervin Brown stated that previous methods in the past caused significant overspending on building projects that went past the initial budget. He supported sticking to the current resolution, which only allows a fixed amount of money to be used for projects.

“At least you know exactly what you’re getting at a hard bid, where you don’t have all of these other issues,” Brown said.

Despite the pushback, Richert stressed that the county will still have several choices in how to build a school, and they can all be considered as each opportunity comes forth.

“We still have the option,” he said. “We can go the hard bid route, but we have other opportunities. As time changes, this puts us in a position to see what’s best. We have smart people in this room. We now have an engineer that’s working with both the school system and us as a county. We can reach out to other people to see where we’re going. If we don’t do that for the citizens of our county, we’re not doing our job.”

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