Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
STAFF WRITER
A recently submitted series of intake facility change orders will result in a project net decrease of just under $100,000 for the Eastern New Mexico Water Utility Authority.
During the Authority’s regular board meeting, Executive Director Justin Howalt outlined the modifications, which were funded by one of the contractors, hence a $97,000 decrease to the Authority’s bottom line.
“There were several items that warranted change order requests,” he said. “We had to make some modifications to the CMU (concrete masonry unit) wall footings, add an additional gate at the intake deck, make some adjustments to the airburst piping support system — which was part of our value engineering study that was done and install guard rail support columns to eliminate some conflicts with the screen route system — that rides up and down the screens on the intake facility.”
Howalt said there were also spooling pieces, which are smaller pieces of pipe, that had to be adjusted when connecting the hydroburst system (which blows the air to clean the system out) in addition to credits for observation that consultants had to spend out observing the construction inspection.
“So instead of the Authority paying for that increased cost, the contractor credited the Authority and absorbed that cost,” Howalt said. “We had some erosion control issues with the rain received at the reservoir, so we added measures to address erosion in the future and correcting the current situation.”
Howalt said rain wreaks havoc on newly constructed sites with regard to erosion, which requires repairing slopes, reseeding and adding slope blankets.
