Road & Highway Builders LLC ,a mainland contractor from Reno Nevada,has submitted the lowest bid for the next phase of the Saddle Road improvement project (between m.m 11-19). I’m deeply concerned that they significantly underbid (27 million dollars, engineers estimate: 39 million dollars) and have no clue on what they’ll be facing when they start work here.
For starters, doing any construction work here costs way more than in Nevada or Texas. On top of that this is their first project here in Hawaii as far as I’m aware.Thus they don’t have workers,equipment staged here, or knowledge of the locale, unlike Goodfellow Brothers, for example.
I hope I’m wrong about this contractor and they do an excellent job on this latest reconstruction phase on Saddle Road. However as it stands now I really believe that they vastly underbid for this project and taxpayers will be left holding the bag.
Aaron Stene
Kailua-Kona
August 1st, 2009 at 6:35 PM
aaron,
i am a contractor with over 30years experience. i welcome a fresh player into our road building market. i fear that the regular players have been ripping us off all these years. true there are challenges to road building here but there are challenges everywhere. some fresh ideas and perhaps new efficiency will be seen. some one fromout of the area will be thinking outside the box also. they will focus on getting in and getting out and on to the next job. not like what we have seen on phase one of Queen k. i hope it will be a sobering experience for the local road building moguls.
whoever has the job of planning and logistics is the most valuable employee on the job. and its not rocket science. larger more complicated projects are completed all the time ahead of schedule and on budget. it will be refreshing to see it done here.
August 2nd, 2009 at 2:59 PM
If they stay in budget and get it done on time! Can I get all my wasted tax dollars back?