Traveling at the speed of ideas on the Knowledge Transfer Exchange, brought to you by the Florida Department of Transportation, the Training Development Team, and the State Office of Construction. David Sadler, Director, 605 Swan Street, Tallahassee, Florida, 850-414-4150. And now, today's guest. Before I get started, let me put a disclaimer on this.
When I was putting this together, I really struggled to figure out how deep to go into it, because sometimes final estimates can get just as specific and in the weeds as you probably don't want it to go sometimes, but need it to go. So I tried to keep it pretty high level and out of the weeds. So if there's anything that you want to know that I haven't discussed, please, please don't hesitate to let me know or Sherry or Ashley as well. And we'll be glad to try to answer your questions. With that, we'll go ahead and get started.
I'm Kristen Brown and we're going to review the final estimates process. Just a quick roadmap on where we're going in the next little bit. We're going to discuss what is final estimates, give you a little bit of general information about pay items and what we look for. And then we're going to discuss the three things that I consider to be the biggest task for our final estimate personnel.
And that's the monthly estimates, the as-built plans, the final estimate process. So I've had several people ask me what is final estimates. So we'll start with that question. Well first contrary to what the name implies it does not start at the end of the project.
It ensures that the contractor is paid fairly and fairly is the key word there because we want to be good stewards of the money and pay the contractor for everything that he or she has accomplished. Because of that When the contractor starts work, he or she's out there to get paid. And because they're there starting the job, we should be there starting the job too on day one. And then also, it protects the department.
We need proper documentation for everything that we're paying the contractor, and that includes the quantity, any time, and the quality of the material that's out there. So a few things to consider. How to calculate final estimates.
We stress this over and over in level two of the final estimate CTQP qualification class and that is read the contract. We just can't stress that enough. Anything that you ever need to know about how to pay a contractor is in that contract so read it and then that will also tell you the contract type. Larry talked to us earlier about alternative contracts, the types that we have other than conventional projects, lump sum design, build, push button, that contract will tell you that.
And then it'll also help you know the specification you need to look at because we're changing those consistently. And then it will also tell you any modifications to the specifications such as technical special provisions or just special provisions in general. So that's crucial.
Know your plans. A picture's worth a thousand words and those plans are going to show you exactly what needs to be done out there on the job sites. Also, anyone who touches the final estimates needs to have a CTQP qualification and final estimates. Field personnel have to have level one. Anybody else, like our contract support specialist or CSS or the PA, they have to be level two certified.
And then know our procedures. We've got And I say we, Final Estimates has got directions in both the CPM and the Review and Administration Manual. The CPM instructions are geared towards the resident office.
The Review and Administration Manual, that is a manual that's specifically drafted by the Final Estimates here in central office, and that's geared towards our district personnel. So those two things are crucial. There's three different ways that pay items can be paid, and this is on a typical conventional project. The first is the planned quantity, and that's simply stated.
That's the quantities that the designers give at the beginning of the project, and we say that those are the true quantities that we will pay. Now, we're all subject to errors, and we can't expect the designers to not make a mistake from time to time. So, if a mistake is determined, to be had in the plans. We'll do a plan quantity analysis on it to find out if it qualifies as a substantial error.
And there's two things we look at. You take the new quantity or the true quantity and you compare it to the original plan quantity that designer's given us. See if it's more than 5%. And this is either or criteria.
So analyze it for more than 5% and then analyze it for more than $5,000. If it meets either one of those, then it qualifies for payment to the contractor. The second issue is lump sum.
Just like it sounds, it's one lump sum for that pay item. A few examples of that are mobilization, their lump sum item, and maintenance of traffic is as well. When you go to the specifications and you look at the criteria in case there's an error on the lump sum, it refers you back to the specification 9-3.2, which is what is a screenshot up here under plan quantity. So you're looking at both the 5% and the $5,000 for the lump sum quantity as well.
And then finally, you've got final measure. There's two different ways we final measure an item. One way is through a certified quantity and that's specified in the standard specifications. We tell the contractor whether or not it has to be certified and that's where the contractor actually measures the item and then our resident office spot checks it. A few examples of that are a lot of our MOT items, asphalt, it has to be certified at the end of the month too, and striping does.
So we provide those certification forms to the contractor for him or her to input those quantities. Some of the reason that that was developed a while back is safety issues. We really don't want our resident office personnel going out there and putting themselves.
in harm's way when the contractor can just give us those quantities as well. And again, he's certifying it. So, I mean, he's got some form of liability on that certification as well.
And then the second one is the final measure. It's pretty straightforward, just the way it sounds. That's where our resident office measures a pay item and we pay the contractor for it.
So, we'll start with the first item, the first task that I feel like a final estimates personnel out. really deals with and that's the monthly estimate. I'm sure most of y'all have seen these dates on our websites.
We generate them usually in the fall and go ahead and post them for the following year. All our estimate dates are on Sundays, typically the third Sunday. And then there's two that fall away from that exception. The first is in June and that's because at the end of the fiscal year, we want to go ahead and get those payments in.
And the second is in November. Typically Thanksgiving falls third week, so we're trying to stay away from the holidays as well. But like I said, the cutoff dates are on Sunday and then the following Monday through Friday is what we consider Estimates Week.
So if you've ever heard that phrase, Estimates Week, that's what we're talking about right there. And one other thing I do want to point out is this is called an estimate for a reason. We do the best we can or the resident office does to coordinate with a contractor to put together an estimate. It's an estimate, not an invoice.
So if something is underpaid or overpaid just a little bit, we can catch it up the following pay period or the following month. In the specification, this is also referred to as a partial payment. So if you run across that terminology, just know it's basically the same thing.
Every month, we need certain documentation to know that we are being good stewards of the taxpayers'dollars and have got the proper justification for the pay items that are being paid. These four items are almost always required and the reason I say almost is there may be a project that doesn't have the first item but the the last three are always included in the monthly estimate. We talked about certified quantities that's what the first item is.
The MOT, the striping, the asphalt and then for lump sum design build projects the contractor has to certify his fuel. The second one is disbursement to payment to the subcontractors. The first estimate naturally will not have this because they don't have anything to certify for the previous month, but we need that confirmation.
Now, there is a spot on that form in case they have not paid their subcontractors. They can list it there and give us good reason why. The third item is construction compliance with specs and plans.
That's where the QC manager signs off that they've been doing the work in accordance to the plans and specs. And then the last is the actual estimate in Site Manager. And that's where the quantities are.
That's where actual dollars are that we know how to pay them. And when the cutoff period comes, Our resident office will get up with our construction personnel and agree on those quantities and then input it into site manager. The resident office inputs it into site manager, but they just coordinate together to get that. But the DCE or their delegate, the district construction engineer or their delegate, actually authorizes them, and they have to sign off on it with a digital signature. The estimate also includes adjustments, so it's more than just your typical units.
But I did want to give you, in case somebody hasn't seen it, I wanted to give you a picture of what a conventional estimate looks like in Site Manager. Now, this is just page one. I didn't show the last page as well.
But you can see in the top right-hand corner in that little brown box, that tells us that this is a conventional pay estimate from Site Manager. You could look at it and just tell it is because it's got all the individual pay items listed. Here's the item numbers. with the units and then over here we've got the unit price. So if you look at one of these line items, for this example it's temporary RPMs, you can tell that this was the actual plan quantity right here that the contractor bid on.
This is how much had been installed or paid for in previous ones. You can tell right here that they're 196% over the original quantities and this was the total amount. For this example, they didn't have any quantities that they were submitting for this estimate, but it is pretty straightforward.
Here's an example of a lump sum contract estimate. Just like the way it sounds, it's one lump sum. So you can see right there where it says one lump sum.
For this estimate, they're asking for 54.2 percent. Now this would have been based off of what the contractor submitted on his schedule of values. He has to submit those every month and the resident office again has to concur with it, but it is an estimate and that's probably no truer than it is on lump sum contracts. And then that's what they were requesting to be paid. 54.2% comes to that dollar amount right there.
We have two different type of adjustments. Those are typically applied to the contract itself, not the pay items. I did want to point out just a few. I'm not going to go through the whole list, but these may look familiar. Larry touched on them in his previous presentation about alternative contracts.
These are incentives that the contractor can earn on the actual contract amount. This is the most complete list I know that we have. Now, there are two that I noticed that were inactive, and... I haven't seen the producer price index used at all since I've been here. And the other is the steel price adjustment.
We no longer do those. We stopped doing them back in 2010. The other type of adjustments are line item adjustments, and these are applied to an actual pay item. Should it change?
I highlighted four here because these are probably our four most common ones. That's not saying that the other ones are not used at all because they are. But I'm sure you've heard the term fueling bit. Those are two major ones. We calculate the fueling by two minutes index every month and it changes.
And what that is, is trying to be fair to the contractor in case there is a big fluctuation in those prices there. Fuel adjustments are only done on contracts that exceed 120 days. By two minutes, adjustments are only done on contracts that have more than 5,000 tons of asphalt. or exceed 365 days. So those are the criteria for a contract to qualify for those.
And then composite pay factor has to do with asphalt and the quality that the contractor gives us. Those are all of our line item adjustments that the contractor can be paid for on a monthly basis as well. The second task that the final estimates really deals with is the as-built plans.
An accurate set of as-built plans plans cannot be emphasized enough because not only is it crucial for us to have this at the end of the project, it's crucial for maintenance because some of these projects go anywhere from 10 to 20 years on their life. Bridges are much longer than that, so we need an accurate set of as-built plans. And this is just the cover of the key sheet showing you how it typically is marked up.
In 2015, all projects let July 2015 and forward had to start doing electronic as-built plans. In 2016, they had to be digitally signed. So that is how the Bluebeam software really became implemented inside the department because when Bluebeam was looked at, I mean, it's got several good uses to it, but it was really looked at for its functionality in the as-built plan. So the as-built plans are not done at the end of the project either.
We want these done as the project is moving along as pay items are completed. There's two different ways to revise them. Number one is just redlining them, which is the resident office showing any changes on them in red ink. As you can see, that's what this red ink is for, is showing those changes.
The second is if there is a significant change on the project. The engineer of record will resubmit a design sheet and that will be inserted into the plans. And so then we'll mark the old sheet with a void and put the correct sheet behind it. Because we are such sticklers for making sure that everything is just as accurate as it can be, on the as-built plans we developed a color coding system, or you call it a marking convention.
It's the resident office's responsibility to mark up the plans in red. We actually haven't quite implemented this orange yet, but it's up for approval and I feel sure it'll go through in our next CPAM revisions. But some consulting firms have quality assurance positions. And I'll give you an example.
I don't know how many of you had the pleasure of knowing Terry Towers, who was the District 2 DFAM. But she left the department at the end of last year and went to the private sector. And this is her job and what the consultants...
want this position for is just to try to catch any mistakes prior to the district looking at the as-built plans. So it's just there a little bit of insurance there. So should any consultant have this quality assurance position to look over what the resident office has done, they would do all their markups in orange. And then we've got two different levels for the district final estimate office to mark on the plans as well. So if you ever look at an As-Built set of plans and you see multiple colors, it's not because somebody just really preferred one color over another.
There's meaning to it. We'll talk about the PARs or the post-audit reviews. Those are when the green markups are done, but we'll talk about that later at the end.
I did want to show you just a few of the main sheets in the As-Built plans. I don't know how many people are familiar with computation books, but I'll take just a second and do a little background on those. Computation books used to be 11 by 17 sheets. They were actually books where the designer inputted all the information and the quantities for every pay item in a project.
So you had your set of plans, you had your comp book, and then you had your specifications. Well, there was a really innovative push to try to make the Asbestos plans a one-stop shop. And so back in July 2014, a memo that was issued that stated...
that all projects let July 2014 and forward would have the plan summary sheets, or excuse me, the plan summary boxes inserted into the plan. So the goal was to try to take that computation book and put it as part of the plans. And of course, this is going to help maintenance as well in the future because they've got all these quantities actually in the plans. So the summary of quantity sheets were developed. They have a plan summary box.
for each set of pay items. The one that's shown here is for earthwork. It shows the pay item number, the description, where it's located at, and all the black text is what's came from the designer. The P is proposed, so that's the designer's quantity right here, F is final, that's where the resident engineer's office, or the, excuse me, the resident office is gonna put their information in.
They don't always have to put a quantity if it's this example if it they've been 507 as the final quantity they could just put a check mark there. But I wanted to show this example because it shows the EDMS number in under the construction remarks and that's exactly what we're wanting in these electronic as fields is any type of reference to any type of calculation or a photo. right here with the pay item number.
So if there's ever a question, you can go here and find out where that documentation is located. Here's a plan sheet. This is where a change has been made out in the field.
I know that's really small, so there's an enlarged section of it, but you can just see where they changed from a 24-inch pipe to a 32-inch pipe. It sort of stands out. The same with the cross-section sheet.
Zoom in on that. They changed the slope a little bit. the resident office has marked this up to where it's easy to find.
Now, after the as-built plans are all marked up, either the resident engineer or, this got discussed at a DC meeting a while back, if the PA is also a professional engineer, they can do this as well for what they were responsible for. But there's the signature sheet that needs to be signed and sealed. Somebody's got to take responsibility for these as-built plans.
So, In the event that there was no changes in this project at all, this is the disclaimer that they would put on the signature sheet. And even though there were no changes, they still have to sign and seal it. And we get that question a lot.
But they do need to sign and seal it. And it basically just says the project was constructed in substantial compliance with the plans by the engineer of record. If changes have been done, and this happens more than the other one, then they would use this disclaimer. These disclaimers are straight out of CPAM.
This language, although it may be short, has sparked some really good conversation over the past year or so, because a lot of the resident engineers have a little bit of heartburn with sign-in and seal-in plans, because they feel like they're sign-in and seal-in the designer's work as well. And so what this basically says, if you look right here, it says, in redline revision, the PE shall be responsible for the following changes in redline revision. And that's the language that says that you are only taking responsibility. for what you have marked up. And then after that they will list all their changes.
And here's an example. On the left-hand side, just look at the left-hand side for right now, this is if there are no changes. You'll see where they digitally signed.
Those are the standard disclaimers. Basically says the printed copies are not the signed and sealed. If you print additional copies, they're not signed and sealed. That's what that disclaimer is saying right there. And then there's the statement of qualification or the disclaimers that we just discussed.
So that's pretty straightforward. Now if you do have changes, same thing, they'll have to digitally sign it, the same signature appearances, the disclaimer we just talked about, about they're taking responsibility only for the red line revisions, and then there they list all the sheets that they actually changed or provided some type of red line revision on. That ends us with the as-built plans and that brings us to the last item, which is the actual final estimate.
So we're at the end of the project and it's been final acceptance. So that basically means that we're at the end of the construction. Now we need to generate the last partial payment. And that's crucial because we want to pay the contractor as much as what is fair and what he or she has earned for two reasons. Number one, because it's fair.
If they've done the work, we want to pay them. And number two, we don't want to pay interest. And if we've held any of their money.
For a delay time, the department is responsible for paying interest on it. So we're going to generate that last partial payment, try to get them paid off as much as we can, and our goal is to have a zero dollar final estimate. So this is where our authority comes from, from standard spec 9-8.
Actually, some of this authority even comes from either the statutes or the administrative code, but this is our go-to reference because everybody loves the specs. So In 9-8, we list nine items that the contractor must provide. And the way we hold him or her accountable is this language that's highlighted right here that they have to furnish all nine of those items within 90 days or the department may suspend their qualification. So if they ever want to do work with the department again, they need to get all these documents in within 90 days. I'm not going to take a lot of time, but I did want to briefly go through all nine of them, and I'll go through it real quick.
Number one, this is basically just saying that the contractor has agreed to the balance or refund. They have a chance to do a qualified acceptance letter, and this is what we call the acceptance letter, and we'll talk about it in more detail in just a little bit, but that's number one. Number two is that they have to maintain the project.
Number three, three and four I grouped together. Number three states that the contractor has paid all the bills associated with that or and has not bribed anybody. Number four is where the surety signs off and they acknowledge that the project is complete and they are going to uphold their obligation under the bond and those three, excuse me, those two items put together is what we call the 21A and we have a standard form.
for that. Number five is that the contractor has taken care of all the wage rate requirements. Number six is that he or she has provided any test or analysis report that was required on the project. Number seven is that they've supplied us with the construction compliance with specs and plans. That is another standard form that the department has.
Number eight that they have supplied us with any as-built drawings. Now this is different than the resident office as-built drawings. This is if the contractor has to provide us with any as-built drawings and signalization is one that they do have to supply those as-built drawings to us and then once they supply it to the resident office, the resident office will take them and incorporate it into the as-built plans. And then the last one is that they have furnished us all the warranties, and then these will be inputted in SIEM by the Resident Office.
So within 30 days of final acceptance, the Resident Office has got to submit the offer letter with these documents to the contractor. And just allow me to clarify something. At this point, after final acceptance, the Resident Office has got two responsibilities.
One is to get this offer letter to the contractor. and then the contractor will send it back to the district and then their other responsibility is to get all the other final paperwork together and submit it to the district office so the first thing we're talking about is the offer letter to the contractor within 30 days and like i said even though the resident office initiates this it's really clear and i'll show it to you in just a that the contractor has to send this back to the district office. This is where the resident office responsibilities start to dwindle and the district really starts to take over. So the offer final payment that the resident office sends the contractor is the offer letter.
The offer letter is pretty much just a cover letter. And it tells them, look, this is how much we're offering you on the final estimate. And the final estimate, not the partial estimate.
There's two different types of letters. There's offer a final payment where we owe the contractor money. And then there's a request for refund where we have overpaid them and they need to give us money back.
And then also it reminds them of that 9-8 language. It says you've got 90 days or we're going to suspend your qualification. And then if there's any other items like your wage rates, they'll list that as well and say we need this information. There is only one offer letter. We cannot stress this enough.
because sometimes we see revised ones. And this goes back to us paying interest. Interest is determined based off the offer letter date, so we only have one.
So that's the cover letter. To provide justification for the dollar amount that's on this offer letter, they include a final printout from site manager of the estimate so that the contractor sees exactly where that dollar amount's coming from. And then the third thing that they'll include is the actual acceptance letter.
This is a lot, this is almost the heart of the offer of final payment. And there's two different type of acceptance letters. There's one acceptance letter. There's two different options the contractor can take. One is regular acceptance and the other is qualified.
And qualified is where they disagree with the dollar amount that the resident office sent to them. Regular acceptance is where they say, okay, I agree with this and we'll sign off on it. Now, I'll show you an example. This is the actual acceptance letter.
You'll notice at the top. It has District 3's mailing address because this goes, again, this goes directly to them. This is a blank one, but it'll show you what their options are.
The first option, this is regular acceptance. It says, we hereby agree to accept payment, so there's no issues here. And then qualified acceptance is the second option, and this says that we examine these estimates in detail and do not agree that the amount is correct. And so this is where they have the opportunity to say that we feel like you owe us this much right here, and this is X amount over the amount that you think that you owe us.
If there is a dispute, this is their opportunity down here to list it. Now, if there's not enough room, they can absolutely submit a breakdown showing what the contractor thinks that they're owed. That's page one, page two.
Again, they have an opportunity to say, we disagree, but this is the dollar amount right here that the resident office and the contractor do agree that is owed. And then this is very important. This comes straight out of the specifications where it talks about full particulars of the above dispute. This is where it says what Zach was talking about, the words estimated, don't cut it. You have to put in the exact dollar amount and provide justification for it.
This is an example. You can see where the contractor took a qualified acceptance. They felt like they were owed an additional $2,820. This is where they outlined it out right here.
So there shouldn't be any disputes. And like Zach says, we looked at one the other day, right here where this dollar amount is, where they felt like they were owed additional, in parentheses, it had estimated and the district sent it back to them. It didn't suffice and it is important to say that does not stop their 90 days either.
The fourth item that's included to the contractor is the 21A. This is a two-page form. It's got four points on it.
The first page is completely for the contractor. The first point basically says that the contractor feels like that they have complied and the district direction of operations has signed off on it. Number two says the contractor has not bribed anybody with any type of gifts.
Number three is they have paid all their subs for the labor materials within 30 days or they will. Number four says they have no claims unless the bottom part is filled out, this section right here. So as long as the contractor signs that, that's...
his part of the 21a. The second page is for his or her surety and it says that they understand that this is the final estimate and it does not relieve them of any obligation under the bond and why that's so crucial is we're fixing to go into the warranty period. If anything should come up, the surety's got to stand behind that performance bond for the warranty period.
And then the last thing is any other required documents to return to the DEFO office. So that is the whole package that the resident office sends to the contractor, which the contractor, again, will then forward to the district office. Now, the second thing that they'll be working on is the final estimate package to the district to close it out.
Quinton and his systems group spoke about PSSP. This is a huge part of PSSP. All of this should be in either there or in EDMS already.
The offer letter is what we just talked about. the final as-built plans, those need to be finalized, the contract time file, the material certification, any overruns and underruns, and then we've developed a transmittal form to help keep everyone on the same page. So this is our transmittal form. If you zoom into it, this is everything that the resident office needs to submit to the district finance office. And I won't go through all of it, but it does have final as-built plans.
It's got overruns. underrun zones, it's a lot of stuff. Try to help them, try to help the district as well.
So after this has all been submitted to the district office, what will happen? Well then the district has the option to review the information. A PAR is a post audit review. The district has the option to do either a PAR or not the PAR. This table and these percentages come straight out of the review and admin manual and they have to comply with these percentages.
As long as they're in compliance with these percentages on looking at their projects, then they get the option of whether or not to do a post-audit review on the project. If any mistakes are discovered, that's where we'll submit a notification of additional funds to the contractor, and that time the contractor will have the option to either accept or do a qualified on those additional dollar amounts. This is an example of a post-audit review report. What's highlighted down here at the bottom is any dollar values that the district finds incorrect.
On this one, you notice that everything is okay dollar-wise, but if you look right below it, it says see following page 202. So even though their PAR didn't adjust what was offered to the contractor in any way, you'll see that on the second page they actually had procedural errors. Right here. So this is the district's opportunity to review what the resident office has done and give any feedback. If there are any errors, the resident office has 14 days to reply back to the district on how they will amend this on future projects. It's the same process we go through on our process reviews, just showing them what they've done wrong and what are you going to do in the future to fix it.
So after that, if there are no claims on the project, The district final estimate office will pass it to the controller for final payment. The contractor has 820 days to file a claim against the department as long as it's part of the qualified acceptance. Any questions?
Why is it important for final estimates to start at the beginning of the project? It's important to remember that final estimates encompasses more than just the end of the project. project.
It's a tabulation of quantities and payments for the entire project as well as the final as-built plans which are updated as the project progresses. Setting up a final estimates kickoff meeting prior to construction is a good idea so all the personnel involved in the project are on the same page and know what is expected. If documentation is done correctly throughout the project, It makes the final estimates documentation go smoother as the project is closed out.
What are some key points that the project administrator should be checking in each month's progress estimate? The project administrator, or PA, should be verifying that the certified quantities submitted by the contractor are reasonable. Spot check when appropriate.
Any forms submitted should be the most recent version. Any contractor certifications should be properly executed in the format specified in the specification. For example, if the project has been let after July 2016, all signatures should be digital. Digital and wet ink signatures should not be mixed on the same document. All digital signatures should be valid in Adobe.
The PA will also ensure stockpiled materials are actually stockpiled and available for the intended project prior to payment and prior to subsequent estimates when the material is not yet incorporated, as well as ensure all backup documentation is available, preferably in EDMS, for all quantities paid on each estimate. On a lump sum project, why is the schedule of values crucial and what format should the contractor use? Although the department has a sample schedule of values posted on their website as a resource, It is not mandatory for the contractor to use that format. According to the specifications, for lump sum contracts, which also includes design-build contracts, the contractor is required to submit a schedule of values for payment purposes. How it is itemized is their choice and will be used each month to determine the percentage earned.
Therefore, a very generic schedule of values leaves room for interpretation and potential disagreement between the contractor and project administrator when determining the percentage earned. We have a sample of the schedule values on the Final Estimates webpage to help contractors out if they want to use it as a template. It is important to know what the actual quantities are in a lump sum project for proper material sampling and testing.
What if there are secondary units on a conventional pay item project showing a lump sum amount such as steel? How do secondary units affect the estimate process? If a pay item has a unit of one lump sum, but there are also secondary units, then the secondary units will be used to estimate the percentage for the pay item that should be paid on the monthly progress estimate, as well as used to determine if any changes Meet the plant area limits of specification section 9-3.2.1.
Why do we have pay item adjustments? FDOT has multiple pay item adjustments including fuel, bituminous, composite pay factor, and thickness adjustments. Some adjustments such as fuel and bituminous are used to help minimize the risk of oil price fluctuations.
Other adjustments, such as thickness adjustment and composite pay factor, are used to reward quality work or deduct for work that doesn't meet the quality required by FDOT's specifications. What is a price index? This is a factor that the department posts each month based on industry prices for both fuel and bituminous prices. Standard Specification 9-2 gives the criteria that projects must meet to qualify for it, and also instructions on how to calculate it.
It is used to adjust fuel prices and bituminous prices based on the fluctuations of price each month. For example, if a project was bid when fuel prices were low and during construction the prices increased, if the contract qualified for adjustments, A positive fuel adjustment could be paid to the contractor to help offset the increase in prices since the bid date. The construction remarks area on the summary of quantity sheets in the finalized built plans is so small and doesn't allow room for a lot of explanation. What should be inserted in this area?
If a pay item quantity is changed, a short explanation should be added to the plans within the construction remarks column. to explain the change. If there is not adequate room to properly explain the change, additional documentation can be used and uploaded to EDMS. The EDMS number will then need to be inserted in the construction remarks column.
The additional documentation can be a department form, a field record, a sketch, or anything else that adequately explains the change. When a resident engineer signs and seals the final as-built plans, are they taking responsibility for the entire plan set? No. There are two disclaimer statements which the responsible engineer has the option of inserting in the final as-built plan signature sheet. The first statement is used when changes have been made.
The responsible engineer is signing only for the changes indicated in red line revisions and that the project was constructed in substantial compliance. The second statement states no changes were needed during construction. If no changes were made, The responsible engineer is stating that the project was constructed in substantial compliance with the plans provided by the engineer of record.
Why is it important to submit the offer letter to the contractor within 30 days of final acceptance? There are several reasons that the offer letter must be submitted to the contractor within this time frame. First, the department is obligated to pay interest on any outstanding amount owed to the contractor. which is not part of a dispute or claim.
Secondly, because of this risk, the 30-day requirement is a performance measure for the department and reported each quarter. Also, if the district discovers the offer letter was not submitted within the required 30 days during a post-audit review, the resident office will be issued a procedural error, which they must respond to. What if a mistake is found immediately after the offer letter is submitted to the contractor?
Can a revised offer letter be submitted as long as it is clearly labeled revised? No. Only one offer letter is made to the contractor. If additional mistakes are found after it has been submitted to the contractor, then a notification of findings letter should be submitted to the contractor, which details the payment adjustment amount.
This is to eliminate any confusion that could occur with multiple offer letters. The offer letter date is used to establish the required payoff date as well. By allowing only one, this avoids a moving target. Thanks, Kristen, for answering all these questions and clearing some stuff up for us. No problem, Taylor.
That's it for now, folks. Until next time, buckle up, travel safe, and always... Keep moving at the speed of ideas on the Knowledge Transfer Exchange.
See you next time. This has been a production of the FDOT Construction Training Development Team. Building bridges to the future, one mind at a time.