As construction projects, such as Frisco’s $5 Billion Mile, Plano’s Legacy West and The Colony’s Grandscape continue to take place across North Texas, the city of Plano is finding ways to overcome a shortage of bids for its community investment, or infrastructure, projects.

Throughout the past six to eight months, the Plano Engineering Department has seen about half as many bids as it used to because of the overall construction demands, Engineering Director Caleb Thornhill said. The declining number of bids has been a trend seen across the city for the past year or two, city officials said.

“There’s such a demand for not only roads but for houses [and] new buildings [as well],” Thornhill said. “I think that’s just stretched the market really thin. It’s causing contractors to have to spend more to keep their crew… So the schedulers are being impacted and the prices are being impacted.”

When the city receives no bids or a bid that is over budget, it could cause the project to be delayed. This could then cause an increase in the price of labor and concrete, Thornhill said.

Over the past year or so, bids have been anywhere from 10-15 percent higher than what the city is expecting, he said.

“[We’ve seen] projects with zero bids, one bid, [or] two bids just from the shortage of crews that are out there right now,” Thornill said.

Financial impact

The Legacy West lift station saw one bid in September for about $6.23 million. The lift station, located at the southwest corner of SH 121 and the Dallas North Tollway, began in early November and upon completion will serve developments at Legacy West and Granite Park. The lift station moves wastewater from lower to higher elevations for gravity flow purposes.

The bid received for this project was a little over 20 percent more than the engineer’s estimate, Thornhill said at an Oct. 25 council meeting. This project is more complicated than others and limits the amount of contractors available to bid, he added.

Adam Lunsford, vice president and construction manager with S.J. Louis Construction of Texas, was one of four bidders for the Legacy West wastewater force main project, which feeds into the lift station. He bid about $5.1 million to complete the project, which was in line with the city’s estimate.

Lunsford said he is currently working on 15 or 16 projects. He said he used to average 10 to 12 projects at a time.

“Personnel is probably one of the biggest [challenges]… as well as getting materials on time,” Lunsford said. “Ever since the market kind of turned in 2008-09, manufacturers don’t keep the inventories on materials like they used to… and [the] cost of those materials has definitely gone up.”

This is something both contractors and cities face, Plano Public Works Director Gerald Cosgrove said.

“When it was 2008, we were probably saving 30 percent on our bids,” he said. “Now we’re probably seeing 10 to 20 percent higher than we were in the past.”

The wastewater force main is a nine-month project. During the course of those nine months, Lunsford said the cost of concrete is likely to increase $5 per yard. When concrete increases, the city will not have to pay for this price change—Lunsford will.

Each city department has an individual budget for the year. If a project is bid over the allotted amount budgeted, the given department will work with the budget department to see if it makes sense to move funds and cover the costs. Reallocating funds is a common occurrance, city staff said.

The department oftentimes has to decide how timely and important the project is or if it can wait another year. If it cannot wait, the city has to decide which projects can be postponed.

Ultimately, if projects continue to come in over budget, less work will end up getting done for more money, Cosgrove said.

Trends & future outlook

Plano Parks and Recreation Director Robin Reevessaid his department has seen four projects over the last year receive no bids at all. He said the department thinks it is due to the small size of the projects, which are typically less than $250,000.

“The only problem we’re finding is we probably have more work that we could put out than we have people who can do the work,” Cosgrove said. “We have lots of projects where we’ve awarded and our contractors don’t have enough people to do the work, so the work is being delayed.”

The question on many people’s mind is when will this gap in the construction market go away, Thornhill said.

“I think eventually it will [go away]. I just don’t know when it’s going to be,” he said. “I do not see the growth in the Collin County area slowing down in the next two to three years.”