Bids are in, and the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners may act Tuesday to award a $547,801 contract for restoration of Brannen Pond Road, including installation of new and improved drainage structures.

It’s actually by far the less expensive of two major road projects for which the commissioners are slated to act on bid recommendations during their 5:30 p.m. Aug. 6 regular meeting. The other project is the paving of a three-mile, never-before-paved segment of Two Chop Road plus a half-mile segment of Banks Creek Church Road with a recommended bid price of more than $3.39 million.

But that larger project could hardly be more keenly awaited by more local drivers than the Brannen Pond Road restoration. A two-mile stretch of the road, which serves as a short-cut of sorts between its intersection with U.S. Highway 80 about a mile east of the Brooklet city limits and Brooklet-Denmark Road, has remained closed since Hurricane Idalia dumped about eight inches of rain on the region nearly a year ago, Aug. 30-31, 2023.

Those rains, which County Engineer Brad Deal said he was told were a “once-in-10-year event,” overwhelmed two existing 60-inch-diameter drainage pipes that run under Brannen Pond Road. This caused flooding over the road, which washed away a portion of the road’s shoulder and damaged a length of guardrail along a sharp curve with a steep embankment.

Although the damaged portion of road is only about 200 feet long, the county has kept all of the Brannen Pond Connector between Brooklet-Denmark Road and U.S. Highway 80 closed to through traffic because of a lack of detours.

Meanwhile, county staff members sought to have the road section redesigned with improved drainage structures expected to survive future flows of similar volume without a washout. The county also applied, from the first, for disaster recovery funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, and its state-level Georgia counterpart, GEMA.

Last December, the county commissioners awarded Kimley-Horn and Associates, a Savannah-based consulting firm, the engineering contract with fees not-to-exceed $158,000. Kimley-Horn conducted a water-flow study and delivered recommendations in May on which the design of the road restoration and drainage improvement project is based.

Big box culverts

The consultants recommended “Concept 2” from the study, which involves installing two 10-by-7-foot reinforced-concrete box culverts to extend 52 feet under the road. These structures are designed to last 70 to 100 years, Deal said.

Along with many other counties in Georgia, Bulloch County was declared a major disaster area in the wake of Idalia by both FEMA and GEMA. Working with the two agencies, Deal submitted the “Brannen Pond Asphalt Road and Culverts Project” plan. Ultimately, FEMA agreed to reimburse the county $509,200 toward the total cost of the project, and GEMA’s agreed share was set at $62,568, also as a reimbursement.

So the county government has $571,768 available in federal and state assistance for the project, with the rest to come from its own Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, or T-SPLOST, revenue.

The county staff emailed bid documents to 21 construction firms July 11, also posting notices in the Georgia Procurement Registry, on the county’s website and as ads in three consecutive Thursday editions of the Statesboro Herald. Bids were opened Aug. 1. Six firms submitted bids, with base bid prices ranging from $540,643 to $960,820.

Second-lowest

The list in the memo to commissioners shows that the lowest bid price was actually submitted by Mill Creek Construction. However, the county staff’s request is for a bid award to second-lowest bidder McLendon Enterprises, at a price of $547,801. The agenda item summary refers to McLendon as the “lowest responsive bidder” having met all the requirements. The summary further states that the one “lower” bidder, meaning Mill Creek, is not currently a Georgia Department of Transportation prequalified contractor, “which was a requirement of the bid package.”

McLendon’s construction price of $547,801 plus Kimley-Horn’s fee limit of $158,000 would equal $705,801. However, Deal said the county did not max out the contract with Kimley Horn, so the engineering fees should be a little less. The engineer’s cost estimate for the construction alone had been $682,000, so the recommended construction bid is $134,199 less than the prediction.

The project as bid includes removal of damaged pavement, base and drainage pipe, as well as construction of the concrete box culvert, earthwork, road reconstruction and guardrail installation.

Once the construction contract is awarded, the contractor will have 120 days to complete the substantial part of the project and another 30 days to finish any details.

So that timeline fits closely with the goal Deal previously stated, and reaffirmed in a phone interview Friday, of having the road ready to reopen in January.

3½ miles of paving

The other, far more costly road project the county commissioners will be asked to award a contract for Tuesday also carries a longer timeline. Turning the currently dirt 3.05-mile run of Two Chop Road, from U.S. Highway 25 to Rocky Ford Road, and the 0.5-mile segment of Banks Creek Church Road into standard paved roads is expected to take about 18 months, Deal said.

The process will include clearing and grubbing, grading and earthwork, drainage improvements, subgrade construction, base and paving.

Bids for that project were also received and opened Aug. 1, and there were seven companies bidding, with base bid prices, rounded to the dollar, ranging from $3,395,331 to $6,491,994. In this case, the staff recommendation will be for the lowest bidder, Sikes Brothers Inc., which “met all requirements of the county’s bid specifications,” the agenda item summary sheet states.

This project is being funded from T-SPLOST. The engineer’s cost estimate had been $4.63 million.

Attracting six or seven bidders each, these projects suggest increased competition among contractors for road work from what the county and city governments here have seen over the past couple of years.

“We were very happy to get that many bids on both of those projects,” Deal said. “That was tremendous.”