It is now official; on Tuesday the Barton Community College Board of Trustees awarded the contract for a future Agriculture, Farm Machinery and Transportation Complex to the low bidder, Harbin Construction. The Salina-based firm’s bid was $3,214,150.
Bids were opened on Feb. 1 and trustees knew that because of a federal grant in the amount of $1,843,594, they would be required to accept the low bid.
The only other bid, for $3,374,000, came from Hutton Construction, based in Wichita.
BCC Vice President of Administration Mark Dean reviewed the information at Tuesday’s board of trustees meeting.
“Both of the contractors are excellent contractors,” he said. “Harbin did our last two projects at Camp Aldrich.”
The land for the future complex is located east of the main campus, directly behind the Community Christian Church at 253 NE 30 Road. Dean showed a map that includes a terraced field to be used by the college’s agriculture department.
This project actually started back in 2017, so some of the architectural work has already occurred, Dean said. Harbin’s bid is just for the construction itself.
He said the BCC Foundation is working to raise additional funds for the $1,843,594 matching grant. So far, the college has raised approximately $561,200 from private donations to apply to the match, although that number will be lower if the college isn’t allowed to use the land as a piece of the match. The money has to be raised by June 30, 2024.
Board chairman Mike Johnson said he wished there had been more bids but he was pleased to see “a large number of local contractors” will be doing much of the work.
His only question for Dean was, “when do they turn dirt?”
Dean said it could be soon because Harbin was already aware they could expect to win the contract. “They’ve been watering today (to soften the ground) so they can get in there with equipment,” Dean said, adding the equipment is already on the property.
However, supply chain issues are still in play.
“The transformer we’ll need was 80 weeks out,” Dean said. “We found one that’s 30 weeks out,” and he placed the order that day.
Executive session
The BCC Board of Trustees added a special meeting to the end of its regular board study session Tuesday so this action could be taken. Prior to voting on the bid, the board attended to another business item. That was an executive session for 20 minutes to discuss the draft of a lease-purchase agreement on the acquisition of property.
