An annual formailty, engineer Doug Davis, along with Matt Russell and Brian Taylor read bids publically, compared pricing, and checked to make sure all bid packages were complete.
"Anytime that you have federal money involved, the bid package gets thicker. There are prevailing wages that need to be followed, there are bid limits that need to be followed, we have to certify not only the bid package but we have to inspect to provide existing documention during the pocess," said Muskingum County Engineer Doug Davis.
The MCEO is currently putting together pricing and estimates for which roads as well as how many miles will be painted and treated. They are not only looking at bidder pricing but product.
"You have to make sure they're putting down at the right application rate. Thickness of paint makes a big difference. Also how wide the stripes are, you can't narrow them up just to make them cheaper. So that goes all along with the bidding process and following that up through construction," stated Davis.
The road painting and re-striping had four bidders, however, only one bidder presented for asphalt emulsion. Davis commented that, to the general public, asphalt is like blacktop. Blacktop however is made of stone, sand and liquid. Today's bidding took place for the liquid portion.
"There's been some switching around in the industry to where companies are starting to buy eachother, so it may be the case here, we used to have two bidders, now there's only one supplier in the area. But we also look at the state DOT pricing, We can actually work off of that price also. We look at which ever one is going to be cheaper and that's what we look at to purchase to make our money go a little bit further," mentioned Davis.
The liquid portion of asphalt emulsion is also used for patching pot holes, cold mix, leveling rural county roads, as well as oil in chip and seal operations. With our large county, road patching and rehabilitation is an ongoing process.
"Some of those areas are so bad that some of the intersections, we're going to have to do some grinding, and overlay it with some hot mix asphalt to fix some areas there and do some motor paving some chip and seal and a combination of different procedures in order to level these streets and roads back up," said Davis.
The MCEO is looking to chip and seal roads that they repaired last year North of our county around the Frazysburg area as well as others within the county. For more information on which roads will be painted and repaired this year, you can find the MCEO newsletter at www.mceo.com
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