meeting to order. >> You can safety and public works committee Brainer Council Chambers January 20th, 2026 701. Uh we've got three items on our agenda. The first of which is cooperative construction agreement for trunk highway
210 and uh Mr. Havagor. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Attached to is the cooperative construction agreement for the upcoming [clears throat] highway 210 reconstruction project. The agreement lays out the construction responsibilities and cost splits for the project as well as uh ongoing
maintenance. The agreement has been reviewed by the city uh staff and also the city attorney. The cost uh included in the estimate are just estimates at this time and will be revised once the bids are open and the contractor is selected. Staffers recommending council
approve the attached agreement for the highway 210 reconstruction project. >> Mr. Chair. >> Yes, Mr. Would you mind if we go through this paragraph by paragraph? Anyway, [laughter] >> could summarize a little bit. >> We get some background music something
you like. You mean >> No, I'm good with it. >> I'm a little levity here, folks. These guys over here. >> Any >> I'd love to, Jeff. >> Any additional comments or questions?
>> Uh, I move to approve, Mr. Chair. >> I'll second. >> Motion. Thank you. In a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. Those in favor say I. >> I. >> I. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And those opposed. Same. Signed. Co. Motion carries. All right. Our second item is
construction observation proposals for trunk highway 210. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Staff solicited proposals for inspection of the city's water main and sanitary sewer for the construction on Highway 210 project. Two proposals
were received. Sew and S and WSB. Staff scored the two proposals and the scoring is attached to this agenda item. The cost will be split according to the construction cost. Estimates are about 85% for the water, 15 for the sanitary sewer. Staff is recommending awarding
the construction observation contract to the for the highway 210 reconstruction project to SEW or SH in the amount of $268,000. >> All right. Thank you very much, Mr. Chzik. I got a question about asbuilts.
The asbuilts up to the contractor or our consulting engineer the oversight. >> That is a good question that I'll probably refer to [clears throat] Mr. Paul. >> Thank you, uh, Mr. Chzock. So, it really depends on the contract. So, there are specific pay items. Um, certainly on
some Mandot contracts, they have an asbuilt pay item that you actually pay the contractor to prepare the asbuilts. Good example of this is for the 371B and Willow Street roundabout. There was an actual pay item that referenced asbuilts
and that's a way that Mandot um a lot of times does their contracts as it relates to city utility infrastructure. [clears throat] Nine times out of 10 city staff or the consulting engineer are going to be doing those as builds as the
construction gets completed. So if they put in a gate valve or a sewer manhole, uh many times the consultant will shoot it right then and there when it's being installed and then those plans once the project is completed. That's usually one of the last tasks that gets done is
they'll take the original design file, import all the points um for the asbuilts and modify the plans and then stamp those drawings as built drawings. So from a city perspective, we always do our own asbuilts. On MDOT projects, it's
very typical for MDOT to shift that responsibility to the contractor. The contractor then hires an engineering firm to do the asbuilt plans. >> Okay. And then do we have somebody then verify what they're giving us in some way? >> As in consultant engineers,
>> anybody. I mean whoever it might be to make sure that what we're getting is you know they hire consulting engineer the contractor does or and they put together asbuilts can we rely on those? >> Yeah I would say yes with great certainty that okay you know the city is
hiring professional services in order to be able to rely on the data that is being provided and the expert guidance that comes from consultants. So >> Okay. And that would be our consultants looking at a contractor's consultant. >> Correct. >> Okay. Yep. Yep. >> Okay. That's all I have, Mr. Chair. Thanks.
>> Right. Thank you. Good questions. Um, Councilman Y. >> Yeah, I think I just had a quick uh procedural question. Do when uh when our applicants or our respondents uh for RFPs turn in their documentation, are they made aware of our do do people do they know what our scoring system is
prior to the time they turn the turn back in their RF their RFPs? >> That is public information, but >> Yeah, they do. It's listed specifically in the RFP. >> That's all I had. Thank you. >> Yep. >> All right. Thank you. Unless there's further questions or comments, be looking for a motion to on this.
>> I would move to approve staff's recommendation here. >> I'll second. >> All right. Thank you. Motion in a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none. Those in favor say I. >> I. >> I. >> Oppose. Same sign. Of course. Motion. Motion carries. And then our final item
is the um >> Did I miss one here? >> There's two items remaining. >> There's two more. >> Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. So third item is the final pay request um improvement 2408 M Street Outfall. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is the final pay request for the M Street fallout
project. As a reminder, this is the project that [clears throat] was uh repaired along Evergreen Cemetery and that was the scouring and the apron um for that section. We also repaired the the fence line on the Bick property and the Bick property owner has reviewed
that project and uh indicated quote unquote project is good. Um work has been uh approved also by WSB that was our engineer firm and the final pay request is for $18,170.95. Um this also this bid is now 3% under
the actual bid. uh the project we had to we actually didn't have to re um we shortened the the pipe a little bit uh for the manhole cover in there. That's why it's uh about $3,000 less for that. And staff is recommending approval of
final pay amount for $18,170.95. >> All right. Thank you. Any questions or comments on this item? Councilman Jagger. >> Yeah, thank you. Just real quickly, I'm hung up again on this percentage complete figure compared to the final app. So the percentage complete showing
at the 96.65 is that prior to it's so it's not prior to this application, but once or prior to this amount, but once we pay this amount, wouldn't we be 100% complete even though the money value is different?
>> That's where I'm going with this, right? >> Yeah. So the the pay vouchers are just taking what the contract amount was and how much has been paid to date. And so that is that 96.65% is strictly related to the amount the city has paid the contractor with this
voucher included if that makes sense. So >> so it it should be it's not really percentage of work done. It's percentage of money on the original correct >> and that's what a voucher is. It's it's completely payment driven. It's not project expense. And the only reason I'm asked is this is just a little bit different in my business. We do it a
little bit different. And so that's what just is is still confusing to me, but I I understand now with your explanation. Thank you. >> Y I wish I would have previewed this question before, but so you mentioned we shortened the pipe, but wasn't the onus for this project to extending the pipe
to get it past that swale? So what was we? >> Correct. So the pipe was already extended to going to the river and we actually just backed up the manhole cover. There was a spring that we uh found. So, we just backed up that manhole cover. So, it actually shortened
the pipe and a little shorter, right? [laughter] >> That makes that that makes sense then. All right. Thank you. Any questions or comments? [snorts] >> Hearing none. Be entertaining a motion on this item. >> I will move to approve staff's recommendation on this one as well.
>> Uh, yep. Second, Jagger. >> Thank you for the motion and the second. Any further discussion? >> Hearing none. Those in favor say I. I >> I those opposed same sign. Motion carries. And then that brings us to our fourth item. [clears throat]
Uh pool engineering services letter of interest uh LOI. And Paul, I believe you're taking this item. >> Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um so if you'll allow me, I'm going to take a little time to first talk about what staff's um hopeful process is in
releasing this RFP. So, tonight is the council's kind of first opportunity to look at a potential new system for the city to pursue uh getting under contract for professional services from our engineering firms. Um, so what what we
had hoped would happen is the city council would review this tonight, provide feedback and comments if they would like to continue down the pursuit of this type of um pool services, and then we would bring this same item to the public utilities commission and the
park board and then bring it back to the city council at their first meeting in February for final approval. So just from a process standpoint, that's how staff envisions this going. So, we're taking comments, feedback, questions tonight um and and hopefully incorporating those into this RFP
document and then bringing them through respective boards and commissions that this might impact um going to this type of pool structure and then finally bringing it back to the city council with a final RFP solicitation. So currently how the city solicits any
type of engineering or architectural services is if the if we have a project either listed in our capital improvement plan or we get direction from the city council, we'll prepare what's what we call request for proposals document. And that is a document that lays out um the
scope of services we're looking for for any type of design or study. It lays out the schedule. It lays out what the deliverables are and is is fairly explicit on what we're expecting the consultant to give us for a what what we would call a proposal, right? And that
proposal is scored based on a multitude of criteria and you can look at every project a little differently on how you score them. Um some projects might be more technical um where you want to put more on the qualifications of said consultant and less on the cost. And
some um some projects might be pretty cookie cutter call them where you're really looking for the lowest price, right? Where when you're in the realm of professional services um the the topic of best value procurement is how how we look at it from staff is that we're
trying to get the best value for the public money to get what the city needs to execute a project, right? Um, so historically how the city has done this is we solicit these RFPs that lay out um, everything we're expecting
in the proposal document from a consultant. Um, that RFP takes time to draft. Um, it usually goes through a couple rounds of review from staff. Um, sometimes it'll come before the city council before it's solicited to garner council feedback um, and some
deliberation. And then we solicit it out. We give consultants a time period, usually 21 to 28 days to respond um with a deadline, much like a bid opening. Um then we receive those proposals. We sit down as staff and we sometimes if it's a larger project, we'll put together a
team of staff that all go through every proposal and score them individually um based on qualifications, based on experience, based on previous projects they've done for other cities, based on cost, based on personnel that are a part of the project. And then we come up with
the score and we say you know we are recommending X consultant because of these factors right we just went through it for the highway 210 um and uh for for those proposals how this process differs and many cities use this concept to set up what can
either be an informal pool or like a very formal rigid pool structure which means we are going out and asking consultants to So there's 15 buckets of engineering services that are identified within the RFP. We're asking the
consultants to pick which buckets that they feel like they are best suited to do and prepare statements of qualifications for whatever buckets they want to put their name in the hat for. Right? So they would say we want to um be uh considered for the city's
wastewater engineering projects, their street reconstruction projects, and their traffic engineering projects for that. just as an example, they would submit a one to two page statement of qualifications that goes over who their project team is, um project examples
from either city projects that they've executed on behalf of the city of Brainard or other cities, uh who their project personnel is, um and then they would submit their rate schedules and um we would score all those proposals just based on a qualification standpoint.
Once those are scored and we make recommendations for consultants that land in each one of these categories, we would bring that back to the city council to more or less finalize this pool structure. Right? You have bucket one, which is three engineers maybe um
that are in that bucket. Bucket two might have two, bucket three has four. And that's based on city staff review of their qualifications, their team, their past experiences, their their rate schedules. um kind of a conglomeration of getting all the qualifications and
personnel out of the way to make contracting for the next five years um less administratively burdensome. Okay. So once the pool is finalized in the RFP you'll you'll notice that the city is
then driving the contracting process. And so historically when we make a recommendation to the council uh and the council approves it, we would request that the consultant provide us a professional services agreement that's written in their format to enter into a
contract with that consultant. In this process, we would be driving that ship where we would provide a master services agreement that's written by our city attorney and city staff and provide that to the consultants so they're all working under the same terms and conditions of the contract. So they
would be provided a draft of that during this RFP phase so they can see what they're signing up for because it's not it's it's typical of agencies to provide their own contract for these services where historically the city has requested that each consultant send their own in. We go through city
attorney review, make sure everything is copathetic for what we need it to say, and then return that back to them with red lines where when we're driving the process, we're giving them the contract and saying, "These are the terms of our master services agreement, and if you want to be in our pool, you have to
accept these terms." So, we're Go ahead, Jeff. >> [clears throat] >> Once you establish a pool, at that point, who's ever qualified in that pool for whatever type of project we're doing, we just um contact them, see if they're
willing to submit us a proposal. >> Mhm. >> We don't have to really put much together at that point. >> Exactly. Yep. So, we're putting together, we still put together, you know, um a task, uh spreadsheet, um what the deliverables are, what the
schedule is, but we're driving that process. We're we're [clears throat] telling them what their assumption should be. A lot of what you're a lot of reviewing RFPs is an art because you're not always comparing apples to apples. Every consultant is putting different assumptions on their proposed costs to
try to based on the scoring criteria that we talked about earlier to help drive their cost down. If you have a a proposal that is very heavily scored on price, they're going to try to make a bunch of assumptions to drive that price down. And if we go outside of what their
assumption was, then they're back in front of us with a fee amendment. If we're telling them what the assumptions are, what the scope is, what the schedule is, it's very explicit in the task order what their services are. Then when we're reviewing, we can review these task orders. If we're comparing
consultants, it's on a level playing field. We're telling them what the assumptions are and then we can score these completely on a 100% cost basis >> once the pool is established. >> Should let you keep going. >> Go ahead. Uh once the we've selected the
consultants for each of the pools, these 15 categories >> for five years, does that box out other consultants during that five-year period or can we do we have the discretion to add other? >> We have the full discretion to go out for full solicitations if we want. The
pool is a process just administratively to allow less burden from a staff perspective in soliciting services and also on the consultant side helping to drive their cost down because they put a lot of time and effort into these decorative fancy proposals. That is
>> frankly a lot of administrative time and effort that just drives everyone's project cost up. So we could individually go out for an RFP on a separate. This would just be an option for us. But as far as the pools themselves within the five years could
we add somebody to new category. [clears throat] Okay. >> Yeah. We're we're in full control of our pool. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. So I mean staff is looking at this as a way to streamline our professional services and we every one of our boards commissions, the city council, we all
oversee professional services contracts. I see this as a very streamlined way for all of our boards and commissions to operate from the same pool structure. They would all have an opportunity to review the recommended consultants in every pool category and make approvals
of that pool. So, public utilities commission, park board, city council will all have a say in this. Um, and then once that pool is finalized, we can go to the pool for every project for the next five years or we can be selective. If if that's if the council wants to
kind of step their way into it, that's perfectly acceptable. >> We had Councilman Jagger had a comment. >> Yeah, thank you. Uh, thanks for bringing this forward. I So, I'm [clears throat] familiar with this system uh to a certain extent, probably just enough to be dangerous, but um so there are
aspects of this approach that I really really like. what you laid out to me makes a a lot of sense on a on a lot of different projects. There are also parts of this system that cause me some trepidation. Um, one of those is is that once we see that
we we we get RFPs all the time and we see wildly different numbers. So, that is a point of concern for me. I would feel much more secure if our RFPs come back and they're always within a 5% window. we have less risk that we are leaving money on the table by just
saying this is our pool guy, we're going to go to him, blah blah blah. So, um that's one that's one of the concerns I have. Um the other concern that I have is that I feel like uh the environment of continually having to prove yourself or continually having to bid uh or or
for subs and vendors to continually have to bid on projects by its own nature creates a more competitive environment continually. So, I support this and I love the idea of cutting red tape and and streamlining process, but I'd be looking for two things. I would like a
threshold of money of which once we go over that threshold, we go to a full competitive bid. And then I also feel like 5 years is way too long. I feel like it should be 2 years max just so we recycle this in front of them, say, you know, we need to re-qualify you again.
We want you to be in a competitive environment. We're not just going to put you in our pool for 5 years and just sign on. So, that's kind of where I'm at with this. I like the idea, but I still don't want to give up too much traction in the competitive world. That's all. >> Thank you, >> Jeff. What is the um dollar amount limit
on professional services before? >> There is none. >> There isn't one? No. >> No, >> there used to be, right? >> No, there's not. >> No. Okay. [clears throat] >> I mean, I would put it I would put that threshold somewhere in the most of our consulting contracts are going to be
like 500,000 and less. We just had one for Oak Street that was over that. Those are the the big big projects that are 500 to a million to a million [clears throat] and a half dollars. >> So maybe my question is this on professional services you don't have to go out for RFPs.
>> No, you can you can direct select every time if you wanted to. >> Now in this pool system, if we have three qualified consulting engineering service, do we ask each of them then? And there is that competition. >> I would say it's a project bypro basis.
If it's a very small $25,000 consultant contract, it might not be worth. >> But to Mr. To Mr. Jagger's point though with >> making sure there's competition, if we're still have a group of consultants, we we wouldn't just say, "Well, we'll take this one when there's two others."
>> Yeah. So, the proposal leaves it open to both direct select or soliciting what we call mini RFPs within that pool category. So we can go to if there's five consultants in that pool category, we can say all five of you, we would like you to submit um your task, hour,
budget, fee for this scope of work at this schedule with these deliverables and these assumptions and then we're just taking 100% lowest cost. We're saying everyone is on the same playing field and we're looking at cost consideration only when we when we get
this back. Or we can throw in, you know, some consultants might put a bunch of very low experienced personnel on the project just to drive their cost down. So you can put some aspect of qualifications back on those mini RFPs to say we don't want you to put 500
hours at a very lowcost grad engineer on such a complex project. We would like someone with 20 years of experience. >> Is there a downside to Mr. Joerger's suggestion of only having this a two-year cycle? I don't think so. I think um once consultants, you know,
once we get through this first phase of this and get consultants into the pool and get the flow figured out of how we continually up this pool structure, if someone's not performing in a certain category, you know, we, you know, during the next cycle, it might give us an
opportunity to say, "Hey, you had a couple projects go south on you. we're gonna take you out of this pool category and um you know we're not going to consider you as a part of that category anymore because you had non-performance on a couple contracts. Right. >> Well, based on that, if the performance
was bad, let's say we did this a uh late later this year, we have a project, we establish a school, and we get a uh we hire a a engineering firm and they don't perform as well as we wanted them to. Can we just say, well, um, we're gonna, uh, overlook them, or is there a re is
there a >> Nothing in this structure limits the city's ability to exercise [clears throat] its contractual authority to get rid of consultants that are for non-performance reasons. We still hold the ultimate authority.
Really, the city has ownership over its own pool. >> Okay. >> Paul, in the time that we have, uh, did you have more to present or at this point? >> I don't think so. Question. I think um you know give it a couple weeks, read it over um ask more questions of Jesse and I you know we've talked a lot about this. Um we're going to bring this to
PUC and park board unless we hear um a lot of disscent otherwise from the council here tonight um to get their feedback and views on this and then it'll come back before you guys in a couple of weeks in February. >> I like the proposal that you've put together. I I think it gives us maximum
efficiency to streamline for staff, but it also keeps all of our options open. I like the two-year I do like that idea of keeping things fresh. So, um if we could maybe explore that >> uh question I have I guess maybe for the committee here just procedurally because I guess what are you asking of the committee here because if we make a
motion >> amended for changes um >> sorry you want comments from council tonight as well >> that would be proof I think. Yeah. When I when we make the motion, we need to consider that. It's the motion is to get council impact and feedback and give you the opportunity to kind of go through some of this.
>> Yep. >> So, it's not just a motion and a second and then we need to give you the opportunity to to speak. >> So, Mr. Chair, are we actually looking for a motion here or is this just discussion? I think it's just discussion and we can take feedback and and if there is some formal action that comes
out of council with reducing the timeline or whatever that is then we can take that and make the edits as necessary. >> Okay. That was my concern. If we just moved into a motion to continue this then we preclude that discussion. So >> we'll just keep it as a discussion item at main council.
>> Yeah. So, just in summary, for me, I I feel like it's two years and 300 grand is kind of the the two [clears throat] thresholds that I feel like is the right balance to just try this out and >> and uh and see how it works. But in concept, I I fully support the idea. >> So, you want to exceed 300 is what you're saying? >> Yeah, I'm think I'm feeling like 300
grand roughly is the is the crossover to traditional uh RFP bid system. Um somewhere around there. I kind of feels right to me just based on the numbers that we see a lot on professional services. So, >> I'd like to I mean when Jesse's in the room here, we can get some idea of how
many like the right intentry project would be like a good >> Well, that was >> like a needle setter for >> Yeah. We want to try to figure out what that needle is because >> if really it's the city's reconstruction and resurfacing projects in a lot of circumstances that are going to be the larger ones that are used quite often in
this pool concept. >> Sure. We're going to have larger wastewater and water treatment projects that come down the line that are going to be pretty high, you know, high cost fees for services. [clears throat] Um, so I think those would always be in that RFP category, but okay.
>> I want to be [snorts] sensitive to Jesse's reconstruction, resurfacing because that's the projects that are going to continually recycle around and around. >> Yeah. So maybe they have a natural threshold built in. >> And I think that 300 might be there. It might be like 350. >> Okay. >> Right in that range.
That's all. Thank you, Mr. Chair. >> Unless there's any other comments or questions, that uh brings our committee meeting to a close. We'll adjourn to council.