by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
The construction managers with Beers Skanska won’t have to move very far for their next job — only about two or three blocks.
Thanks to a 4-1 vote of the City’s Professional Services Evaluation Committee, Beers was selected as the construction manager for the new $211 million Duval County Courthouse.
Beers is currently finishing the new United States Courthouse at Jacksonville, which will be substantially complete by Friday and senior project manager Brian Murray said recently the tenants will start moving in late next month and Beers should be completely off the site a few weeks later.
In a marathon evaluating session Wednesday at the Schultz Center — it started at 8 a.m. and ended about 6:30 p.m. — PSEC heard presentations from Beers Skanska Dynamic Partners, Dick Corporation — who was teaming with the local firm Batson-Cook — and Centex Rooney. Each firm was given two hours to make their case followed by a 20-minute question and answer session.
“The committee ranked Beers number one, Dick Corporation number two and Centex number three,” said Sam Mousa, the City’s chief administrative officer. “It was very close between the three.”
The county courthouse construction manager job represents the last major decision for PSEC and Mayor John Delaney regarding the $2.2 billion Better Jacksonville Plan. There have been competitions for every facet of all four major vertical projects within the Plan. The new ball park and arena are coming out of the ground and the new main library site has been totally cleared.
Mousa said the next step is for Delaney to accept PSEC’s recommendation. In the past, Delaney has done so within a day or two of PSEC’s decision. However, Delaney is out of town and may not consider PSEC’s recommendation until early next week. Mousa said he expects Delaney to agree with PSEC only because he has yet to disagree with any of their recommendations.
“He can accept their recommendation or tell the committee to start all over again,” said Mousa. “But, he can’t change number two to number one or anything like that. He [Delaney] doesn’t have to sign off until he gets back. I don’t suspect the mayor will vary from what he’s done in the past.”
Mousa said Beers came out on top for three main reasons and the fact they are already building a courthouse in town only helped them get into the construction manager competition, it didn’t weigh at all with PSEC.
“I’m sure it played a role in helping them get to the dance, but once they were in, they all start over from scratch,” said Mousa. “The committee picked Beers because they have two or three minority participants, PSEC felt they had a stronger management team and PSEC felt more comfortable with Beers.”
The last step in granting Beers the job is contract talks and fee negotiations. Mousa said he expects that to happen within the next few weeks.