Three boards review engineering contract

County officials are stumped as to why so many people failed to notice a huge mistake.
By ED RUNYAN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- Three separate boards, all containing engineers, reviewed a contract Trumbull County signed with an engineering firm and found no problems.
However, there was a problem and that problem was the reason for a fruitless meeting Wednesday.
More than two hours of discussion among the parties involved in a 1.2 million engineering contract awarded to a Youngstown company didn't resolve anything for county officials.
But it did indicate to a top county legal adviser that the end result will probably be higher costs to be borne by 60 Newton Township residents slated to receive sanitary sewers when the first phase of the project is complete in 2008.
Jim Misocky, first assistant prosecutor in the civil division of the prosecutor's office, said he believes the contract county commissioners awarded to ES & amp;C International Oct. 3 will have to be split into two parts and the first part renegotiated to come up with a proper price.
If the county pays ES & amp;C in Phase 1 the amount it agreed was fair in the original contract, the project's costs would rise from about 2.2 million to about 2.4 million, Misocky said. His understanding is that the additional 200,0000 would be passed on to the property owners, he said.
Upcoming negotiations
The actual price the county will pay for the engineering will be the focus of upcoming negotiations, Misocky said, and will probably fall between the 250,000 that an engineering study recommended and the 450,000 that ES & amp;C's contract called for, Misocky said. The sewers are planned for an area considered to be low to moderate income that qualifies for some grant funding.
The reason there is a 200,000 difference, officials have said, is because Sanitary Engineer Gary Newbrough mistakenly misinterpreted a preliminary engineering study and thought the price he had negotiated with ES & amp;C covered engineering administration costs. In reality, those amounts are separate and would need to be paid by the county.
Misocky said one reason so much confusion has arisen over the disputed contract is the state law that governs them. When a county is prepared to award such a contract, it asks engineering companies to submit their qualifications. After ranking and selecting the most qualified company, someone is assigned to negotiate a price with the company. Competitive bidding is not used.
ES & amp;C representative John Evan says Newbrough may well have misinterpreted the preliminary engineering study by MS Consultants of Youngstown but the amount of the contract to his company was correct.
But county officials such as Commissioner Paul Heltzel and Deputy Sanitary Engineer Rex Fee wanted to know from Evan and ES & amp;C President Sat Adlaka why the company didn't point out what Heltzel and Fee said should have been obvious to them: That the county's error would leave the project underfunded by 200,000. Counting both phases, the mistake would leave the project underfunded by 548,000, Newbrough said.
Industry standard
Heltel also said that he thinks that ES & amp;C and others should have been alerted to a problem because the contract called for ES & amp;C to be paid about 25 percent of the total project cost when the industry standard is only 15 percent.
For their part, Newbrough and Fee suggested that the mistake was not easy to spot and the reviews done by a number of boards confirms that.
They said the nine-member District 6 Integration Commission, which reviews projects that receive State Issue 2 funding; the Eastgate Regional Council of Governments; and the Ohio Public Works Commission all reviewed the project without noting any problems. The groups all contain professional engineers, Newbrough said.
When questioned by Commissioner Dan Polivka as to whether employees in the Sanitary Engineer's Department independently verify the cost estimates they are given, Newbrough said they do not, that they trust the credentials of professional engineers.
Polivka said that policy needs to be changed. "This is just mind-boggling to me," Polivka said.
runyan@vindy.com