Clay / Nancy, After yesterday’s meeting I went home and studied the bid tab in detail based on Icon’s statements that we are out of line on certain bid items. It is not fair for Icon to isolate individual bid items that are high and blame North Texas for being out of line. There are over an overwhelming number of bid items that NTC is over 10 % lower than the other bidders and many that we are less than half of the other bidders. These items ignored are not even brought up as Icon doesn’t acknowledge them. To bid a very large park with this number of bid items and unit prices is very unusual and made for a very difficult bid process especially for the subcontractors not accustom to unit price contracts. Most quotes were not sent until the morning of the bid and comparison was extremely hectic due to the 100 plus bid items for each subcontracting trade. Money was placed in bid items and especially in lump sum items that are a “safe” place to put fixed costs that the contractor needs to be paid regardless of the quantity of all the subsequent bid items. The fact of the matter is that the contractor bid what Icon and the other consultants designed and drew on the bid documents. For Icon to cast judgment that we did not do our job and our prices are too high is not fair. I committed before the bid and stand by my promise to try and work as hard as I can to save the city money which I have done so far. I am going to spend the next two days doing everything I can to get to the figure we discussed. It is unethical to solicit more bidders after the fact or shop the low bidders number to firms that didn’t even quote the project. Many people worked very hard before this bid to generate figures that helped NTC be $ 750,000 lower than the next bidder. We received over 265 subcontractor quotes on this project and averaged between 15-20 proposals for each scope which is outstanding and undoubtedly saved the City and UDR a large sum of money. This project bid at the peak of the recession where contractors are desperate for work and material prices are at an all time low. If this project would have bid a year ago the turnout would have been at least 50 % less and the price would probably be 10-15% higher. Icon does not acknowledge that although random isolated bid items are higher that the gross total is substantially lower than the next bidder. I could just as easily sat in that meeting yesterday and criticized them for having a ridiculously low inaccurate budget. It could be said that if their budget was more accurate we would not look as high as they accuse us of being. We simply priced this project as cheap as we could including what they drew and detailed on their plans. I just wanted to reiterate that I am going to do everything I can to help out within the limits of what is right, ethical and that still allows the parties involved to be profitable. I am also going to look at our mark up and discuss with the larger subcontractors to see if we can offer up even more savings in an effort to help get the project awarded. I can promise that 100 % of any savings plus mark up will be given back so you both can confidently know that everyone did all they could to save the maximum amount of money. I appreciate what you have allowed me to do so far and look forward to more success on the quantity reduction options that we talked about yesterday. Thanks for the opportunity and please consider what I said above as I just want Icon to consider this process from my position which I think is a fair request. Zach Fusilier North Texas Contracting 4999 Keller Haslet Road Keller, Texas 76248 Office - 817-430-9500 Cell - 817-819-6691