After several restarts and addendums by WVU going back to Oliver Luck's tenure, the changes during the interim and then again when Lyons took over and various requests for clarifications, substitutions and such by the contractors, the bids for the turf project were turned in last Wednesday, a week ago. Don't quote me on this, but from following this a little bit in the past, I think they usually have a schedule on projects like this where they award somewhere around a week and a half or so after they were received. That would put it on Friday or somewhere thereafter.
Obviously, construction won't start until next winter, but I was curious to see who we select as a vendor. The market and technology has really evolved and there are several companies out there who make good stuff and, while there are various proprietary features each one will sell you on, they're all relatively comparable.
As I mentioned before, it looked like WVU tailored this bid basically so they could get a certain result. You had to have so many installations in your portfolio, I think a prior working relationship with WVU may have been preferrable, they wanted a turf with a blend of both monofilament and slit film fibers, which I think is good because it gives you the best of both worlds in terms of aesthetic, durability and infill stability, and the new underlayment and drainage system needed to be a specific type. They even rejected FieldTurf's request to substitute their "VersaTile" drainage system because WVU wanted a Brock PowerBase underlayment or equivalent put down to replace the old system once the crown is removed and the soil is remediated.
FieldTurf and AstroTurf were neck and neck with FieldTurf coming in a few hundred dollars less on a seven figure bid. I'm not sure what kind of leeway they have in making the selection or if it's strictly a lowest-bid-wins type of deal. The new team room was lowest bid(G.A.Brown out of Fairmont) and, though it took longer than we hoped, it ended up a couple million dollars under the original budget and maybe more with the liquidated damages in the contract relative to the completion targets. Obviously, this is a more time-sensitive project.
Anyhoo, here's a link to the list of legit bids from my Google Drive account. Notice one was disqualified. I assume they didn't meet the prerequisites. Shaw must've thrown in the towel.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5YMxK2Wo81cQ1RkSlRnTG16ZWs/edit?usp=docslist_api
Obviously, construction won't start until next winter, but I was curious to see who we select as a vendor. The market and technology has really evolved and there are several companies out there who make good stuff and, while there are various proprietary features each one will sell you on, they're all relatively comparable.
As I mentioned before, it looked like WVU tailored this bid basically so they could get a certain result. You had to have so many installations in your portfolio, I think a prior working relationship with WVU may have been preferrable, they wanted a turf with a blend of both monofilament and slit film fibers, which I think is good because it gives you the best of both worlds in terms of aesthetic, durability and infill stability, and the new underlayment and drainage system needed to be a specific type. They even rejected FieldTurf's request to substitute their "VersaTile" drainage system because WVU wanted a Brock PowerBase underlayment or equivalent put down to replace the old system once the crown is removed and the soil is remediated.
FieldTurf and AstroTurf were neck and neck with FieldTurf coming in a few hundred dollars less on a seven figure bid. I'm not sure what kind of leeway they have in making the selection or if it's strictly a lowest-bid-wins type of deal. The new team room was lowest bid(G.A.Brown out of Fairmont) and, though it took longer than we hoped, it ended up a couple million dollars under the original budget and maybe more with the liquidated damages in the contract relative to the completion targets. Obviously, this is a more time-sensitive project.
Anyhoo, here's a link to the list of legit bids from my Google Drive account. Notice one was disqualified. I assume they didn't meet the prerequisites. Shaw must've thrown in the towel.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B5YMxK2Wo81cQ1RkSlRnTG16ZWs/edit?usp=docslist_api
