Bids for Cedar Rapids flood wall exceed expectations

CEDAR RAPIDS - Three contractors have bid more than expected to build the next piece of the city's flood control system - which will raise the flood wall at the Quaker Co. plant to protect against a flood the size of the record Flood of 2008.

Even so, Rob Davis, the city's flood control program manager, said Monday the city's engineering staff will recommend approval of the lowest of the three bids. That bid is from Peterson Contractors Inc. of Reinbeck, which exceeded the $11.5 million estimate for the construction work by $1.2 million, or 10.56 percent.

Davis said the staff will recommend that the City Council go ahead with the bid because all three bidders' offers were in 'proximity” to one another.

'We are comfortable the value of the work is understood,” he said.

The City Council will review the bids at its meeting today.

The bid from WRH Inc. of Amana was 17.23 percent above the prebid estimate, and the bid from Tricon Construction of Cedar Rapids was 19.66 percent above the estimate.

Construction is slated to start on the Quaker project this summer.

Davis has said the Quaker project will keep in place the substructure of the flood wall that Quaker hustled to build after the plant took on water in 2008. But the visible steel of the wall above ground will be removed and replaced by a gray reinforced concrete wall.

The new wall will be 1,878 feet, or a little more than one-third of a mile long, and will stand 14 feet above ground level on average. Work should be completed by February 2017.

The total project cost had been estimated at $15 million, including preconstruction design and engineering costs.

Of the total, $9.9 million is coming from federal disaster money initially intended to be used by the city to raise a low-lying stretch of Otis Road SE next to the river. A few years ago, the city sought and won approval to shift the use of the money to the Quaker flood wall.

The remainder of the project funds will come from the $264 million in flood control money the city will get over 20 years from the state Flood Mitigation Board.