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STEUBENVILLE -- City officials have taken the first step toward getting the Beatty Park bridge fixed, advertising for proposals for professional engineering design services.
During last Tuesday's meeting, council decided to advertise for an engineering firm to study the options for fixing the bridge, which has been closed since July 2019 when workers discovered the sandstone underpinning the aged structure had weathered to the extent the span is no longer safe for vehicular traffic.
City Engineer Mike Dolak said proposals are due May 18.
Dolak said the engineering firm will give council "detailed engineering costs to rehab the bridge vs. replacing the bridge with 20th century material."
"That's what this does for you, it gives us an in-depth estimate," he said. "It authorizes preliminary engineering. Let's say it comes back that we want to rehab the bridge -- then we move into final engineering, waterway engineering, bidding and construction. They're going to look at it from both sides."
"And that's anybody can bid on that?" 3rd Ward Councilman Eric Timmons had asked. "When we put that out, we will get several bids on that?"
"For engineering services, they need to be a qualified engineering firm in the state of Ohio," Dolak replied. "There will be a committee formed of three of us, we'll pick (the firm) on a quality-based selection. The protocol we follow, that we've followed during the last 25 years is choosing an engineer (based on) quality, not cost. That's the way we do everything with our federal projects, city projects, local projects -- anything we feel is going to be over $50,000 value. "
Dolak told Timmons he's not sure the engineer who has been advising the Friends of Beatty and attending council sessions periodically will qualify.
"I don't know if he has an engineering firm," Dolak replied. "I believe he works for a county engineer up in the northern part of the state. I don't think he has an engineering firm to put in a proposal for this."
Timmons asked if the proposals come in "and we don't like any of them, we don't have to go with any of them?"
"Well, once you guys pass the ordinance, that's it," Dolak said. "You pass the ordinance and the proposals come in. We form a committee (to) review them, there's a quality-based selection, a point system, we use to rank those."
Once the proposals are ranked, the firm scoring highest would be recommended to City Manager Jim Mavromatis to do the preliminary engineering.
"Then that would come to council to fund it?" Timmons said.
Dolak said they'd have to figure out how they wanted to pay for the study.
"I think what Eric's asking you is do we have to hire whoever that firm recommends and the answer is no," 4th Ward Councilman Royal Mayo said. "Do we have to hire the person to do the work they recommend? We just have to hire the firm to do that, but not then hire who they recommend to do the work."
Dolak reiterated that the engineers doing the preliminary designs would develop detailed cost estimates for both scenarios -- rehabbing the existing structure as well as replacing it -- and then present both options to the full council.
"At that point you say, 'We want to do this Option A' or 'that Option B.'"
Once council decides how it wants to proceed, the project would go out for final design and construction.
"That's something separate," he said. "It would (take) another ordinance to authorize (a firm) to do the work."
"(So) we're not locked in to anything," Timmons said. "We're just getting the ball rolling."