Change for change orders

Janet Imrick

Randolph Hub

ASHEBORO – The Asheboro City Council resolved two unplanned change orders for the Zoo City Sportsplex. These make up for discrepancies in older change orders they already made to Terry's Plumbing and Utilities.

At the July 11 council meeting, City Manager John Ogburn said he does not recommend the city use self-performance for future projects. "This cost the council a lot of heartburn and headache because we thought we were through with this," he said.

The City Council noticed the discrepancy during their June 27 special meeting, when they had scheduled end-of-fiscal-year accounting for the Sportsplex. Ogburn said when they got the final pay application from Terry Tucker's business to complete his contract, the contract amount was lower than the total of all payments requested.

The city used a state-approved keystone purchasing alliance to fund the turf fields and a grant to add a fitness court. These resulted in more concrete around buildings, pads, access drives, sidewalks, bleachers and aprons for foot traffic. Ogburn said they realized they failed to adjust for that concrete in change orders #5 in 2022 and #8 in 2023.

"We dropped the ball on our end, but Terry dropped the ball on his end, too," Ogburn said. "We failed to make adjustments in a timely manner. We know that there were mistakes in this project."

As corrective action, Ogburn said they broke the final payment into three change orders, numbered 12-14 and totaling $755,553.71. Change order #12 covers the work on the final tract; #13 and #14 fix change orders #5 and #8.

City Council member Joseph Trogdon, Jr. said the city should not have waited for work to be complete to approve the payments. Drawing from his construction experience, he said that working those out beforehand protects the contractor and the city.

"If you'll look down there under approvals, it says to be effective, this change order must be approved in accordance with the contract documents," Trogdon said. “And that should have been done before."

Trogdon asked if the contract had a price escalation clause. City Surveyor Tom Scaramastra said they did not but put in wording for negotiating prices.

Mayor Pro Tem Walker Moffit said, "I know on state contracting, on a major bid item, after it exceeds over 100 percent, you get to reprice it anyway. You're not held to that unit price once the quantities change a certain amount."

"You're right, but you also have to refigure it and prove what happened or not," Trogdon said.

"Staff's not arguing that the methodology needs to be changed," Ogburn said. "That's why we purposely recommend a corrective action. And on the next projects, we won't do them the way we did this project."

Moffitt asked if Tucker was prepared to sign off that these payments are final. He motioned that the council approve the change orders on condition that the payment would be considered final and would be paid upon the receipt of all contract close-out copies. The council voted to approve that.

"I don't want that to come back on us. It should show somewhere that it's been paid," Trogdon said.

At the meeting, they also approved a change order for Terry's Plumbing for the stone base, binder, asphalt, concrete flat work, storm sewer and catch basins recently completed at McCrary Ballpark.

The upcoming projects — the new fire station, airport terminal, Jarrell Center City Garden — will all use the Design, Bid, Build method. "Self-performing has served us well these many years, but now is not the time to use that process anymore," Ogburn said.