The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Some bid proposals going out April 6
Patience just might pay off for some local contractors waiting for their chance at a job on the Crested Butte Community School renovation project.
There has been some anticipation from members of the construction community leading up to the start of the project and concern that general contractor FCI Constructors Inc. could overlook local contractors in favor of larger contractors they have worked with on other projects.
Roy Blythe, owner and principal of the Blythe Group & Co., which is overseeing the expansion and renovation project, has repeatedly said that local contractors with competitive bids will be the favorite when FCI chooses sub-contractor to man the jobs, especially on the smaller parts of the project where local subcontractors would be well suited.
But for local people to get the job, they first have to win the bid and that chance is coming soon. The longer days and rising mercury have everyone involved with the planning making preparations to break ground as soon as the snow melts.
A request for bids to provide food service equipment, which generally takes a long time to get, has already gone out to potential suppliers.
The next request for bids will go out on April 6 for dirt work at the Crested Butte school site, as well as landscaping and some renovation drawings, according to Marc Litzen, FCI’s project manager for the school project. The same day, a request for qualifications will go out to contractors for mechanical and electrical jobs at the school.
“We’ve done our best to make sure your local contractors will have a chance to bid projects coming up at the school. We advertise when we begin the bidding process for jobs in papers from Crested Butte to Montrose,” he says.
FCI also has a system with the names of 5,000 contractors—“a bunch of those are local to the Crested Butte area,” says Litzen—that notifies contractors by fax or email when a job in their area of expertise is going out for bid proposals.
Litzen says any contractor who wants to be added to the list can fill out a contractor information sheet that can be found on the company’s website, fciol.com, or can be requested through the mail.
Previous efforts to engage local contractors directly about bidding on the project have fallen through, says Blythe.
“The Gunnison County Contractor’s Association cancelled a meeting that was going to be held at the end of February. They were the ones that cancelled and they haven’t rescheduled. That was going to be a bond-specific meeting dealing with all of the schools, not just CBCS,” he says.
Even without the GCCA participation, Blythe says, local contractors have had plenty of opportunity to get involved with the project.
“There has been an ongoing list of contractors who have contacted the district about work and that has been passed on to FCI. FCI is supposed to be notifying anybody who showed interest and they also have a list that they have been generating,” says Blythe.
After the requests go out to contractors on April 6, the next request for bids will go out to contractors dealing in structural steel, masonry, metal stud framing or drywall on May 18.
To contact FCI about filing a contractor’s information sheet, call (970) 434-9093 or visit their website at fciol.com.
