Revised pricing is attached. Zach Fusilier North Texas Contracting 4999 Keller Haslet Road Keller, Texas 76248 Office - 817-430-9500 Cell - 817-819-6691 From: Jennifer Haynes [mailto:jennifer@ntexcon.com] Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2010 9:50 AM To: 'Zach Fusilier'; 'Eric T. Little' Cc: 'Nick Jacob'; 'Clay Barnett'; mikesr@ntexcon.com Subject: RE: Trees The agreed upon quantity is 60 trees from the Ponte bridge to the existing TXDOT bridge. There are also 25 trees that were in the contract on the south side. So, the grand total quantity of trees is 85. From: Zach Fusilier [mailto:zfusilier@ntexcon.com] Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2010 9:40 AM To: 'Eric T. Little' Cc: 'Nick Jacob'; 'Clay Barnett'; jennifer@ntexcon.com; mikesr@ntexcon.com Subject: Trees Eric, Talking with Jennifer there appears to be a situation from the trees. Here is what I know: 1) The tree quantity from Icon is wrong 2) The contract is a unit price measured per actual installed quantities 3) There are 25 EA trees on the South side of creek 4) There are 40 EA remaining Per the walk through with Nick & Mike today 5) Weir claims they removed 34 trees last week This is where I came up with 99 EA trees. I do not think we should speculate over how many trees there are. We know there are 25 Ea shown on the plans and we know after Nick’s walk through that there are 40 EA remaining. I have instructed Weir and our people to go separate the pile of already removed trees that have not been hauled off and count with UDR so we can put the quantity issue to bed. Once the number of trees is agreed upon I will revise the number and re-submit if we are incorrect. I also heard there is heart burn over the unit price of the removal. This is not even a North Texas item and the cost belongs to Weir Bros. They were significantly lower than five other dirt numbers which ranged from 300K to 2 million. This price also includes the costs to remove the trees close to existing buildings and in the creek which are all averaged in. I thought the 10 % price reduction was reasonable for the volume discount. Everyone can speak of what the “think” is too much, but I have yet to hear anyone speak of us being too cheap when a quantity comes up short. In a unit price contract there will be numerous items that will over run and under run. I am confident that there are multiple items in this contract we may never even use and / or under bill significantly. I also am confident that there will be a busted quantity on something that we have no money in that the when over run we will lose money at. We will not complain and we will accept the over run because per the contract we have to. NTC was the low bidder on this job which is calculated when all the unit prices are totaled up. This means that we may appear high on the trees, but on many other items we are cheaper than the others. I studied the bid tab this morning and wanted to point out a few other items that no one brings up. No one wants to let us add money to items that are obviously cheap to UDR or the City, but when an item comes up that appears to be profitable then its not accepted. Item 31 – Temp Creek Diversions & Handling of Water – 1 LS NTC - $ 200,000 Ed Bell - $ 355,000 JC Commercial - $ 725,000 Item 34 – Placement of Clay for Creek – 3,615 CY NTC - $ 39,865 Ed Bell - $ 84,425 JC Commercial - $ 51,539 Item 186 – Granite Bollards – 23 EA NTC - $ 57,500 Ed Bell - $ 115,000 JC Commercial - $ 107,257 Item 201 – Hydromulch – 15 AC NTC - $ 22,500 Ed Bell - $ 45,000 JC Commercial - $ 74,478 Item 203 – Bermuda Sod – 181,816 SF NTC - $ 36,363 Ed Bell - $ 90,908 JC Commercial - $ 56,362 There are many more items just like this where we are “turkey” low but intend to honor the price no matter what the quantity is. The real person at fault here is the Engineer. The city and UDR trust them to put accurate quantities for each bid item. If they don’t then instances such as this one come up and the Contractor looks bad like we are trying to ask for a change order when we are simply bound to bid his quantities. If an engineer doesn’t get the quantities right then the entire theory behind unit price contracts are void and the job should be bid as a lump sum type which is traditionally how this job would have been bid. Please give me your thoughts as I hope everyone knows that NTC is not out to “get rich” off any of this work and this tree item is not even our money we are talking about. We will do whatever we have to do to stay in good standing with the City and UDR. Please keep in mind that the tree removal price includes removing them, loading them, haul off and the dump fees at Lewisville Landfill which are steep. There might be money savings if we can grind onsite and spread over the fill area. Let me know and sorry for the monster email. Zach Fusilier North Texas Contracting 4999 Keller Haslet Road Keller, Texas 76248 Office - 817-430-9500 Cell - 817-819-6691 No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 9.0.819 / Virus Database: 271.1.1/2881 - Release Date: 05/19/10 01:26:00