Title
The Board of Water Commissioners for the City of Detroit, Water and Sewerage Department authorizes the Director to enter into Contract No. PC-794 “To Provide Assistance with the Exchange, Maintenance and Repair of Meters and Meter Interface Units (MIUs) throughout the City of Detroit for Correcting Exceptions within the Automated Meter Reading System” with Lakeshore Global Corporation (Contractor), at a cost not to exceed $1,600,000.00 for a duration of 456 calendar days, and also authorizes the Director to take such other action as may be necessary to accomplish the intent of this vote.
Body
Agenda of October 19, 2016
Item No.16-0146
Proposed Contract No. PC-794
Project Length: 456 Calendar Days
Amount: $1,600,000.00
TO: The Honorable
Board of Water Commissioners
City of Detroit, Michigan
FROM: Gary Brown, Director
Water and Sewerage Department
RE: Proposed DWSD Contract No. PC-794, “To Provide Assistance with the Exchange, Maintenance and Repair of Meters and Meter Interface Units (MIUs) throughout the City of Detroit for Correcting Exceptions within the Automated Meter Reading System”
Contractor: Lakeshore Global Corporation
Designer: DWSD
MOTION
Upon recommendation of Marcus Hudson, Chief Financial Officer, the Board of Water Commissioners for the City of Detroit, Water and Sewerage Department authorizes the Director to enter into Contract No. PC-794, “To Provide Assistance with the Exchange, Maintenance and Repair of Meters and Meter Interface Units (MIUs) throughout the City of Detroit for Correcting Exceptions within the Automated Meter Reading System” with Lakeshore Global Corporation (Contractor), at a cost not to exceed $1,600,000.00 for a duration of 456 calendar days, and also authorizes the Director to take such other action as may be necessary to accomplish the intent of this vote.
JUSTIFICATION
The purpose of this contract is to provide as-needed trained meter installers to help the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) manage the Exchange, Maintenance and Repair of Meters and MIUs as corrective maintenance and related work for the Automated Meter Reading System. Demands for corrective maintenance and related work cannot be met with the existing staff primarily due to the volume of work that exists.
BACKGROUND
DWSD’s contract CM-2007 implemented the Itron, Inc. (Itron) fixed-base retail automated meter reading (AMR) system, commercially known as Water SaveSourceTM, to automatically collect the water meter reads from DWSD’s retail customers. The Water SaveSourceTM system was placed in production in December 2007. Customers are required to have the meter reading equipment in order to have water service at the premise. The AMR system provides actual meter reads. Yet, there are Exceptions that can occur in the system due to customer tampering and occasional network issues. There are over eight types of Exceptions that can occur. When an Exception occurs Customers receive estimate bills versus actual.
CONTRACTOR PROCUREMENT METHOD
The reason for this sole source procurement is to complete scheduled appointment work while correcting Exceptions in a timely fashion. Lakeshore currently provides assistance to Meter Operations to meet this challenge. Their staff was trained by DWSD for this specific task and has been involved with the implantation of AMR from the beginning. To bring in new employees or different contractors at this time will be detrimental due to the time it takes to confidently train and deploy new staff. This makes them a single source provider at this time.
PROJECT OBJECTIVE/COSTS
The objective of this project is to correct AMR System Exceptions by Exchanging, Maintaining and Repairing Meters and MIUs throughout the City of Detroit without disrupting or falling below the industry standard of offering meter appointments in five (5) days or less. Correcting the Exceptions in a timely fashion also enables DWSD to provide customers with accurate bills versus estimates. The ability to keep the five-day standard for appointments demonstrates to our customers how important they are to the department.
The contract costs are as follows:
Contract Price $1,600,000.00
Total Contract Price $1,600,000.00
PROJECT SCHEDULE/PROJECT STATUS:
A. Start Work Date: To be established contingent upon BOWC approval
B. Final Completion Date: 456 calendar days after the Start Work Date
C. Bid Price: $1,600,000.00
D. Projected Fiscal Year (FY) Contract Expenditures:
FY1: $1,000,000.00
FY2: $600,000.00
Contract No. PC-794 was presented to the Finance Committee on October 7, 2016, and is an Operations and Maintenance (O&M) funded project.