WA9701-CS050914Suzan Taylor - Contractor selection on Denton Tap Road WL Page 1 i
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"Doug Showers" <DShowers@BHCLLP.COM>
<kgriffin@ci.coppell.tx us>
9/14/2005 9:18:51 AM
Contractor selection on Denton Tap Road WL
Good morning Ken,
I wanted to update you on the progress of qualifying the Iow bidder J T
Dersner of Arlington Texas
t. Financial information as of June 30/05 Contractor has $120,000 in
bank, which if it is still there should carry them through the first pay
request.
2. Insurance. We asked for and received a Certificate of Insurance
meeting the limits listed in NCTCOG.
3. Current Contracts with other parties All contracts listed are as a
SUB to a general contractor. 3 of the contracts are scheduled to end in
Sept. 05. The balance of contracts listed are already completed It
appears that they do not have any ongoing work. I will check with them
on this situation.
4. Company details. JT Dersner was formed in June '03 by Teresa
Childers and John Skinner Both are former employees of both Barson
Utilities and Patco Utilities, two local utility contractors. The
company hired it's first employees in July '04 They now have a total
of 21 employees, 11 of which have been hired in '05.
5. The lead "foreman" proposed for the project has been with Dersner
since Jan '05 and has been working for utility contractors for the past
4 - 5 years
6. We are familiar with John Skinner as he has been involved on many of
our previous projects while at Barson and Patco. His position of VP
means that when we have a problem he will be available. Dennis Gulley
was recently hired from Moss Contracting and we are familiar with him on
a recent project for the City of Ovilla. However, once again he is the
estimator PM and not the field man. Both these men are probably
competent (we have no reason to dispute this).
7. References I have contacted references from the following
Cities:
Lake Worth Barry Barber
Richardson Henry Drexel
Duncanville Joel Daughtry
Coppell Garreth Campbell
Also I contacted the PM from Tiseo Paving, Troy Childers, who is
involved with the Sandy Lake storm drainage project.
There are no BAD reports. Dersner seems to do their job and satisfy
the client and the general contractor. The projects listed are not as
complex as our Denton Tap Road WE although they have done recent
projects along active roadways where traffic control was an issue
without incident. They have also been involved with a project where
Suzan Taylor - Contractor selection on Denton Tap Road WL Page 2
they had to work with the City of Richardson to disconnectJreconnect
water service to residences and businesses. The only issue here was
the City standing firm on the timing for shutdowns (ie. out of business
hours) I think our specification is very clear here
8. Concerns. Our most significant concern is that this is Dersner's
first PRIME contract. So, although their employees have been prime's in
the past, they will need to be trained to work as a prime in Coppell.
With this we are not sure how they handle the pressure of priming a
contract. Even though they have bonding capacity can they make it
through the project and make some money so they will still be in
business. In other words is this too much for them as a first prime
contract.
Our second concern is the degree of difficulty of this project. I have
no doubt that Skinner and Gulley have seen this kind of contract before,
however do their field crews have the experience to juggle the
utilities, traffic, service reconnection challenges for adjacent
businesses and the sub contractors for boring etc.? Even Fox did not
bid this as they saw it as a risky challenge.
I would like to take you up on your suggestion to visit the
contractor's yard and even an ongoing project to talk to the field
personnel that they propose to put on the project before we make the
recommendation.
9 Conclusion At this point I cannot with confidence disqualify
Dersner. However my confidence in their ability to handle THIS project
is not yet at a level to make a recommendation in their favor. As you
know Barson Utilities is the second Iow bidder at $7,000 above Our
experience tells us that Barson has the experience and personnel to
complete the project So we have a backup plan if Dersner does not meet
our expectations and satisfy our confidence level.
I plan to have this wrapped up by Friday September 16
I welcome your comments on this process as I want all of your fears and
questions to be answered
Sincerely,
Doug Showers
CC: <kmarvin@ci coppell tx us>, <staylor@ci.coppell tx.us>