Clear Lake council approves Dean Snyder Construction as manager at-risk for Surf District Music Enrichment Center

CLEAR LAKE — During a special session last night, the Clear Lake City Council approved the selection of Dean Snyder Construction as the construction manager at-risk for the Surf District Music Enrichment & Immersive Center building project.

The council last month had approved this process, as opposed to the traditional design-bid-build project procurement, as finalists are chosen based on qualifications determined by the city, with the city then selecting a manager that offers the best value for the project. It allows the council to choose who they felt was the best contractor for the project and not just relying on who ended up being the lowest bidder.

Andi Tisor was one of a nine-member steering committee made up of four city representatives, four Surf representatives and one community representative who reviewed and evaluated the three Requests for Qualifications and Request for Proposals submitted.  “Following the opening of the bids and adding up the total scores, combining the RFQ and RFP, Dean Snyder Construction had the greatest total points and the least cost proposal overall, and prevailed as the best value. Dean Snyder Construction is who the committee is recommending as our choice to award the Music Enrichment Center project.”

City Administrator Scott Flory says Dean Snyder Construction will now work with the design professional, and eventually the project will be ready to solicit subcontractor bids, which have to go through the normal bidding process.  “Those have to be publicly bid, competitively bid, and in all situations, the low bid has to be selected on that. Even though we keep talking about this project, construction manager at-risk, best value and all that, there’s still that component of it where you go through a very traditional kind of bid situation where we’ve had. So we won’t have what’s called the GMP, the Gross Maximum Price, until all of those things take place, so probably not until February will we know what that price is.”

The council unanimously approved the selection.