I was encouraged by the positives aspects of the seawall meeting last night among all the board members. Our ability to be able to evaluate proposals made by different engineering firms should be encouraged, this opens the process to allow firms to be creative and present a cost-effective solution that capitalizes on the latest and best knowledge in the field. This is what we saw last night and thus should allow the RFP process (vice RFQ) that will allow competition among more firms.
In just one short approx. 40-minute meeting between 2 engineering firms we learned there is a possible viable alternate cost effective solution. Langan asked some really tough questions (I applaud that) about Foundation Masters design, , it is no different than the tough question I have been presenting to Langan, but in the end we learned there is a possible viable alternate cost effective solution that even Langan said was willing to look into deeper, thus by direction of the board, the 2 engineering firms are getting together to work out the nuances.
Hopefully you noticed the meeting quickly moved into those nuances of engineering factors, Our Chairman Mr Curley even mentioned that may be getting to deep, this why I requested the special meeting with Mr Curley the engineering firms in the first place as I figured this would occur. We should know by now that the devil is in the details, and no matter what “fix” is decided upon there will be anomalies across the global project and each contractor will have to adapt to those changes anyway.
We also learned last night that a short-sheeted wall was found and that piping (soil under the wall) indeed is occurring, and our walls in general even though as said by Langan not showing cap rotation are still moving, it is highly probable more will be found and we also learned many areas that Langan thought were rip-rap now require new wall. Taking that into consideration knowing that new wall cost is higher but unavoidable it would behoove us to look at less cost viable designs as we did last night.
Foundation Masters documented $500 per linear foot for 1000 feet, but when Mr Curley mentioned as much at 30,00 feet needs to be done, Foundation Masters mentioned approx. $400 per foot or maybe even less. My thought process is each time we add new wall but we have alternate less cost option, that works in other areas, that should offset some or most of that new wall cost
Again, I applaud the cooperation and collaboration of all the board members and the 2 engineering firms last night, I sincerely hope this is a way forward to a cost-effective solution that will eliminate all the unfunded liabilities and 2nd and 3rd order issues that we are learning about with rip-rap.
Looking forward to the next meeting when many of these questions should be answered!