43
Trumbull road work to use ‘bulk bid pricing’
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
The Trumbull County Engineer’s Office will put its road-paving projects out to bid this year in combination with five townships and the village of Newton Falls in hopes of reducing costs for all the parties involved.
It will be the first time Trumbull County has used the idea and will make Trumbull one of the only counties in Ohio trying it, said Don Barzak, director of governmental affairs for Engineer Randy Smith.
It is one of several joint projects that Smith has worked on since taking office last August.
Paving will be bid out jointly among the county, Newton Falls and the townships of Bazetta, Howland, Hubbard, Johnston and Vienna.
Barzak said with the “power of bulk bid pricing,” all the entities should realize a cost savings over bidding out their jobs separately.
The bids should come in lower, Barzak said, because one contractor getting all the work will be able to schedule work more efficiently.
Administrative and engineering costs associated with the project should be lower, and having a single legal advertisement will save roughly $3,000, he said.
In about a month, the engineer’s office plans to take the same approach with the chip-and-seal program, a less-expensive form of road resurfacing.
Barzak said he expects about 10 communities to participate in that program.
Summit County used this type of combined approach last year and considered it a success, said Heidi Swindell, government-affairs liaison for Summit County Engineer Alan Brubaker.
“We got more participation than we expected, and we were happy about that. ... We’re really proud of the program,” Swindell said last November.
Trumbull’s engineer also has applied for a $500,000 Local Government Innovative Fund grant through the Ohio Department of Development that would enable the county engineer to build a salt-storage facility that would serve the county and 14 townships, cities and villages.
That project would save about $400,000 by preventing several townships from having to build their own storage facility. Those townships, all located within a short distance of the county engineer’s office on North River Road in Warren, would use that facility to hold their road salt, Barzak said.
Through bulk buying, all 14 townships, villages and cities would save a combined $1.4 million over 10 years from buying salt in bulk, Barzak said.