Contracts for runway extension get county’s OK

Contracts got approval by the Polk County Commission between the Georgia Department of Transportation and The Astra Group for the Cornelius Moore Field runway extension project that brought Governor Nathan Deal to the airport in 2018.

The vote over four project-related items came in quick success during the Polk County Commission’s regular session on Jan. 8, which includes approval of an agreement between the Georgia Department of Transportation and the county over funding for the project, two work orders for Holt Consulting who are overseeing the work, and with The Astra Group, who came in with the best bid for the runway extension construction to be completed.

The most important of the items that were approved was the approval of the agreement between the state’s transportation division and the county.

It guarantees the cost-sharing percentage between the Department of Transportation and the county in a unchanged, remains standard 75 to 25 split, with the state taking on a majority of the costs.

After value engineering, the final price tag for extending the airport’s runway to 5,000 feet will be around $6.8 million and will take more than a year to complete once all the parties have signed on the dotted line, and votes are completed.

County Manager Matt Denton said during discussions over the forthcoming votes in the Jan. 7 work session that despite best negotiating efforts, the state wouldn’t change that specific language in the contract to say they would cover all costs above a figure of $1.5 million.

“It is the best the state said they would do on the language,” Denton said.

He said the county would have to settle for verbal agreements the county’s match wouldn’t exceed that level, and when questioned after he said the final price tag was coming in around $13,000 short of that figure at over $1.4 million that would come out of county coffers for the extension

The county has already covered some of the matching funds through the initial costs of project design, survey and regulatory requirements. The rest will be applied toward construction costs.

Holt Consulting’s Jack Mayfield was also at the Jan. 7 meeting to explain that a member of their firm will be on-site full time to ensure that everything is being done to specification and at cost to avoid wasted materials and prevent overruns on the price.

“If we see if there’s going to be an overage, we’re immediately going to talk to GDOT immediately and let them know it,” he said.

Mayfield said that since GDOT will be controlling if any overruns will be approved on the project before they ever get to the county commission for change orders, that process will likely keep costs down overall.

Commissioner Hal Floyd did have questions over some changes made to the final costs estimates put forth in the project’s proposal tied to how much was being added in to cover site preparation work and costs adjusted for an increase in stream credits. That is required because the work will disturb 270 feet of mapped waterway near the airport.

The cost of the credit was initially put at $80,000, but went up to $90,000 in the intervening time.

Mayfield said additional padding was put into the estimates for the project to also cover any unexpected clearing of rock that would be needed to get out of the way. Though they aren’t expecting to use the money since several drilling samples of the area where dirt is being taken from the airport to fill in elsewhere didn’t turn up any initial problems.

Estimates from Mayfield put the timetable for completion of the extension at 420 calendar days on a “Monday through Sunday” work schedule.

Some of the work in the extension centered on the western end of the runway is now classified as a safety-related project, since it will bring the county’s airport in compliance for the amount of extended clear, flat land is needed past the threshold of the runway itself. That’ll now go out to the required 200 feet, and is a violation that GDOT officials have noted in a previous inspection according to Mayfield.

Commissioner Scotty Tillery provided praise to Mayfield and Holt Consulting for their work thus far on the project, and noted that state officials also were thus far happy with the efforts put forth by the firm.

The board approved the agreement, work orders for Holt Consulting and the contract with The Astra Group without any further comment.

It marks the end of one phase of work on the project, and the start of another nearly a year after former Governor Nathan Deal announced that Polk County’s airport would be one of 11 in the state getting upgrades as his tenure was in its final year.

Deal came to Cornelius Moore Field in February 2018 to sign the state’s amended budget to ensure the project would get the funding it needed for completion from the state’s Department of Transportation.