Our interim city engineer wrote a column for the El Paso Times this Sunday.
She said that her engineering and construction management department had made “profound” progress on the projects in the last year. She suggested that we go to buildingtomorrowtogether.com to see their progress, so I did.
Most important
The web page lists ten of the projects that we voted for, one of which they have already started construction on. The city was in a hurry on that one so they chose not to bid it out but instead use a “requirements contract”.
This Quality of Life bond project is obviously the most important one (or it would not have been the first one started), it is the “Convention Center North Pedestrian Pathway”.
The pathway will provide a pedestrian entrance to our ball park and is scheduled to be completed by April 2014, just like our ball park. This project is scheduled to cost $500,000. You can decide if it is really part of the ball park costs.
Another project titled “Pedestrian Crossing and Way Finding” will not have it’s first phase bid out either. The city plans to use a “requirements contract” on that one too. Remarkably the web site indicates that construction has not yet started but completion for phase one is scheduled for August 30, 2013. This project will evidently make it easier for pedestrians to find the new ball park.
Tomorrow is right
The buildingtomorrow part is accuate. Of the other eight projects three are scheduled to have construction complete in August 2015. Three, including the children’s museum, do not have anticipated completion dates but are marked as “BEYOND THREE-YEAR ROLLOUT”. One project is scheduled to be completed in August, 2016.
Incredible digital wall
In Something is rotten in the state of Denmark I wrote about a new $3 million digital wall. At the time the city was planning to force five city staff members to go to Denmark to learn about it. The wall is scheduled to be completed in August of 2014. It is a good thing we sent our staff over early, you never know where they might move Denmark to.
Children’s museum
According to the web page this project is on schedule. “Urban Planner Consultant selected. Received proposal on October 14, 2014“. For those of you reading this post at a later date please remember that at the time of this posting it was November 2013.
Maybe we should nominate city staff for an award in fiction writing.
For those of you who are either crying or laughing too hard to go look for yourselves, the web site presentation is below:
We deserve better
Brutus
elpasospeak 
Is “requirements contract” city hall speak for, “we already know who is going to get it?”
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The pedestrian pathway design contract was awarded to Quantum Engineering Consultants, a local firm which boasts that it is a “Historically Underutilized Business and Certified Disadvantaged Business Enterprise”.
A “Historically Underutilized Business” is a for-profit entity that has not exceeded the size standards prescribed by 34 TAC §20.23, and has its principal place of business in Texas, and is at least 51% owned by an Asian Pacific American, Black American, Hispanic American, Native American, American woman and/or Service Disabled Veteran, who reside in Texas and actively participate in the control, operations and management of the entity’s affairs.
It is interesting that Hispanic-owned business headquartered in a city that is more than 80% Hispanic considers itself disadvantaged. Such is life.
Moving on down the pathway, Quantum’s contract is for design only. They are not a construction company, so the $500,000 being paid to Quantum, does not include cost of construction. So who will get paid to actually build the pathway? Could it be CF Jordan or the Hunt/Jordan joint venture? Only time will tell. Follow the money or in this case the pathway.
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Not much room left on that list for us gringos. El Paso is the least diverse place I have ever lived as you correctly point out. It make me wonder why there is so much whining about lack of opportunity for minorities, since that’s all there is!
The smart folks here, of whatever ethnicity, do OK for themselves. I’m thinking of the great La Fe organization, Bob Wingo’s advertising firm, our Library director, the enterprising Asians on El Paso Street and, yes, a couple of 8(a)s run by good guys who can jump.
Live and let live.
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It will be competitively bid through the normal bid process. The bigger question is – can the design team keep it in the budget – I heard Quantum has not been able to do that.
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Maybe that’s why Quantum is an “underutilized” business.
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