Bids awarded for Century drop-off lane, high school HVAC

The Park Rapids School Board awarded three contracts Feb. 7 for construction of a new parking, pickup and drop-off area at Century School.

According to a bid recommendation letter from ICS, the engineering firm recommended awarding three contracts totaling $899,114. School board member Clayton Hoyt made a motion to award the contracts, and the motion passed unanimously.

The contract for earthwork went to Gordon Conrstuction of Mahnomen, Inc., for $645,950. Additional earthwork bids came from Anderson Brothers, Gladen Construction, Racer Construction, J.R. Ferche Inc. and Reierson Construction.

The asphalt contract was awarded to Howard’s Driveway, Inc., of Menahga, for $177,174. Anderson Brothers also bid on the contract.

The electrical contract went to Bergstrom Electric, Inc., of Grand Forks, N.D., for $75,990. Another bidder was Bessler Brothers Electric, LLC.

Project Engineer Austin May presented an update on the school improvement project, including a bid tabulation for six work scopes involved in building a new bus garage. May said he and Project Manager Justin Maaninga are still working on verifying these bids before making a recommendation.

Work on the Century site improvements is slated for this summer, according to May’s presentation.

Superintendent Lance Bagstad asked the school board to approve entering the TIPS cooperative purchase program.

Like Sourcewell, the educational service co-op that provided the purchasing contract for the metal to be used to build the new bus garage, TIPS provides purchasing contracts to participating government entities, Superintendent Lance Bagstad explained.

According to Bagstad, the low bid for high school HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) equipment came from Midwest Mechanical Solutions (MMS) of Golden Valley. However, they’re not a vendor with Sourcewell but with TIPS.

“What we had to do in order to access this contract,” he said, “is become a member of the TIPS cooperative programming.”

Asked whether there is a cost attached to becoming a member of TIPS, Bagstad said no.

Maaninga affirmed that MMS’s proposal is an “apples to apples” comparison to the competing bid from SVL, which makes Daikin equipment while MMS manufactures York equipment.

Hoyt made a motion to enter the co-op, and school board member Colter Diekmann made a motion to purchase the HVAC equipment from MMS. Both motions passed unanimously.