WINNSBORO – Tuesday night, the Winnsboro Town Council passed a Resolution of Award for an $11,439,306 bid from DS Utilities of Little Mountain, for construction on the Broad River Intake and Raw Water Line project that is expected to bring as much as 10 million gallons of water to Winnsboro within the year.
Bids opened publicly on Aug.3, and the town received nine bids, with the highest being $14,434,300 from D. H. Griffin Infracture, LLC and the lowest coming from DS Utilities.
HPG and Company, the Town’s consulting engineers, recommended DS Utilities, and determined that the company is capable of completing the project within the desired time-frame and within the allotted budget.
“This is the recommendation from the engineers to accept this bid,” Town Manager Don Wood told Council. “They have come back and vetted the company and said that they can certainly do the job based upon their qualifications.”
According to HPG, they are working with contractors on some changes could result in a cost reduction for the line.
The Resolution of award is conditional upon receiving certain approvals from the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control.
Final approvals for construction came in April and Georgianna Graham, Vice President of HPG, told Council then they had 90 to advertise for bids.
“Construction on the $15 million project is expected to be completed about this time next year,” Graham said in June. “The project should have been approved sooner, but there were several unforeseeable delays. You had everything approved last July (2016),” she said, “then the Department of Archives and History required an archeological survey, and then the state changed the application form. Then, for whatever reason, the permits were not issued until April,” Graham said.
The Town’s attorney, Creighton Coleman reported to Council that the issue of easements had been resolved and that a judge had signed off on them.
