County looks at architects for new jail
ESCANABA — The list of companies seeking to design a new Delta County jail is being narrowed.
The Delta County Board of Commissioners approved a group of finalists from a request for qualifications (RFQ) for the jail project and released another RFQ during its meeting Tuesday.
Under an RFQ, companies submit information on why they are qualified for a project before submitting bids. One of the RFQs discussed by the board Tuesday involved architectural/engineering services. Since Dec. 13, the jail committee has received proposals from eight firms and worked toward narrowing its options.
“We’ve got it down to four finalists,” said Delta County Administrator Ryan Bergman.
The board approved the jail committee’s recommended list of finalists Tuesday. Finalists for architectural/engineering services include Kalamazoo-based firm Byce and Associates, Inc., Chicago-based firm DLZ, Ft. Wayne, Ind.-based firm Elevatus Architecture, and Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo-based firm TowerPinkster.
According to Bergman, one of the jail committee’s top priorities when selecting finalists was finding firms that had prior experience with newly-constructed jail projects.
“We put a lot of weight, as a committee, on companies that have done a new jail process from start to finish rather than architecture companies that have done other things that would like to get into (jails),” he said. “We feel that’s the safest choice for us.”
From this point, the committee will interview representatives of these firms. The interviews, which will take place over the next two weeks, will be closed to the public.
“The only reason for that is so there’s no competitive advantage from (firms) going into each other’s interviews,” Bergman said.
Bergman said the committee could decide which firm it will partner with for architectural/engineering services by the end of January.
“We have an ambitious timeline and, hopefully, we can meet it,” Bergman said.
The board also voted in favor of releasing another RFQ to find a construction manager for the jail project. According to Bergman, releasing this RFQ separately from and slightly later than the architectural/engineering services RFQ was intentional.
“The plan was always to get the architect on board a little bit before the construction manager,” he said.
Under the current schedule, Bergman said he hopes to have a construction manager chosen by the beginning of March.
In other business, the board:
– accepted an emergency response plan for employees of the Delta County Courthouse.
– finalized an agreement with the city of Gladstone allowing Delta County Building and Zoning Administrator Dan Menacher to serve as Gladstone’s code official. The agreement still needs to be approved by the Gladstone City Commission.