by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
When the first round of the competition for construction manager of the new Duval County Courthouse ended, Better Jacksonville Plan officials had the best kind of dilemma on their hands. Because the three firms that submitted proposals all performed so well they have all been asked to participate in the oral interview process, which is set for Sept. 18.
“We received three proposals and found all of them to be responsive and qualified,” said Sam Mousa, chief administrative officer for the City. “They all graded out very close; within a few points of each other. Because of that, we’ve scheduled oral interviews with all three. They are Beers Construction, Centex Rooney and Batson-Cook.”
On Sept. 18, representatives from all three construction firms will go before the City’s Professional Services Evaluation Committee (PSEC) in an effort to win the job of managing the construction of the $2.2 billion Plan’s most expensive vertical project. At $211 million, the new county courthouse by far exceeds the $130 million price tag of the new arena.
Mousa said the PSEC oral interviews are open to the public and he expects PSEC to make a recommendation to Delaney by the end of the day. In a formula very similar to the one used to rank the architects and construction managers of the new ball park arena and main library, PSEC will rank the firms and submit the results to Delaney.
“It’s up to him to accept our recommendation or throw them back and tell us start over,” said Mousa.
Once a firm is selected, it will mark the last major administrative hurdle for Plan officials. Outside of negotiating a contract with Cannon Designs, the architect of the county courthouse, and whichever construction firm PSEC and Delaney chooses, there isn’t much to do administratively. For Mousa, that’s fine.
“This has been a long, deliberate, fair process,” he said. “It’s quite a milestone to have all our construction managers on board by the first of October. It’s [the work] really just beginning, though.”
Richard Lovelace, the assistant vice president at Batson-Cook, said his firm is eager to appear before PSEC and believes the number of projects his company and national partner, Dick Corporation, are currently working on will impress PSEC.
“Obviously, all the scores are very close. Two points separates all three firms,” said Lovelace, who’s also in charge of business development. “We are anxious to present our team. We think we are very qualified and will be a good team player for the city.
“In my opinion, once we present our team and sit down in front of them and let them see who we work with, that’s when we’ll shine. We have far more courthouse experience than the others.”
Batson-Cook has teamed with Dick Corporation to build federal courthouses in Fresno, Calif., San Francisco, Cleveland, Miami and the Sandra Day O’Connor courthouse in Phoenix.
“All of them are either beginning or already under construction,” said Lovelace.
If any of the firms has a slight edge going into next month’s interviews it’s Beers Skanska and only because the firm is about to complete the new United States Courthouse at Jacksonville, which is across the street from City Hall. Robert Utsey, director of development for Beers, doesn’t consider his firm the front runner and said Beers will simply rely on making a solid presentation.
“We look forward to presenting our local joint venture courthouse building team to the City and having the opportunity to deliver the same level of quality, cost efficiency and timeliness that we have achieved on the federal courthouse,” said Utsey. “We are proud to include our local minority partners and we have experienced local leadership and local decision makers.”
Bob Collie, vice president of Centex Rooney Construction Company Inc., said he, too, impressed with all the firms but believes his firm’s courthouse building experience in Florida may give Centex Rooney an edge.
“My initial thoughts are the City can’t go wrong. Everybody is qualified. I think we’ve got more Florida courthouse experience than the others combined and that’s important in this environment and climate,” said Collie.
Centex Rooney has been in Jacksonville for 10 years and has eight other offices in the state. They have built courthouses recently in Ft. Myers, Osceola County (an addition and renovation), Marion County and Indian River.
“We are very familiar with the subcontractor community and the minority business community here in Jacksonville. We are very well suited for what this community needs,” said Collie, adding his firm specializes in face-to-face interviews, or what he calls construction management at risk. “That’s typically how we are winning work.”