During its Aug. 13 meeting, the Sedona City Council gave an additional $201,938 of public money to J. Banicki Construction, the firm hired to build a pedestrian underpass under the Schnebly Hill Road roundabout, to complete lighting and handrail work on the sidewalk.
Agendized as a consent item, the change order was pulled for a discussion by Councilman Pete Furman.
At the time the City Council approved the contract in April 2023, construction was planned to be completed in February 2024. Associate city engineer Bob Welch did not specify how much of its 25% profit on the contract Banicki would be expected to return to compensate the city and the public for the six-month delay, instead stating that damages will only be assessed after several more weeks elapse.
“We have a hard-fast date of Sept. 6 that we’re holding the contractor to,” Welch said. “There are liquidated damages associated with not making that date.”
Sedona Director of Public Works Kurt Harris later explained that the project had already been subject to eight previous change orders, three of which had extended the project’s soft completion date by a total of 156 calendar days. Including an additional 59 days authorized by the current change order, total delay through Sept. 6 will be 215 days.
All three time extensions were related to obtaining an Arizona Department of Environmental Quality permit for portions of the work due to Oak Creek being classified as a Unique and Outstanding Water of Arizona, regulated by ADEQ within Arizona Department of Transportation’s right of way.
“There are no completion date deadlines or associated penalties, but an agreed schedule for tracking purposes,” Harris said.
Harris added, “Change orders work both ways to protect the owner and the contractor when problems or discoveries literally arise during construction.”
“The first change order on this project has to do with the visionary lighting package,” Welch said. “[That] has to do with LED lighting that is compliant with our current lighting standard that wasn’t part of the specifications originally.
“Component two has to do with underground electric service conduit … The initial thoughts on where this was and where we were coming from differed from ultimately what APS was requiring.
“Component number three has to do with the concrete wall and barrier color … We added a component color.”
“The next component for additional retaining curb and handrail … we fell slightly short with that under the plans,” Welch said. “Component six had to do with a full-depth saw cut and seal. Originally we were utilizing an expansion joint-type material … to avoid premature crackage in that pathway, we did an isolation saw cut to separate those two systems.”
“These changes were necessary according to staff,” Deputy City Manager Andy Dickey said. “These changes were not errors attributed to our design consultant.”
“You learn as you do things,” Furman said.
Council approved the additional expenditure of public funds unanimously.
“The completion date is scheduled for Sept. 6,” Harris stated in an email on Tuesday, Aug. 20
