New Pflugerville officials rethink management of projects

By Kathryn Eakens Friday, 05 February 2010

PFLUGERVILLE — The City of Pflugerville is reviewing alternative plans for the Wilbarger Creek detention pond after the city council learned in October the project initially budgeted at $2.6 million was on pace to cost as much as $18.8 million.

Klotz Associates, the Austin-based engineering firm hired to design and construct the pond, presented six alternative plans ranging from $2.3 million to $7.6 million to the council Nov. 10, and Mayor Jeff Coleman said the council has directed Klotz to prepare a more detailed cost analysis for each of the alternatives.

“Once we have those final numbers we will then make a final decision as to what this detention pond will eventually look like,” Coleman said.

In November, the city hired H.R. Gray, a construction management and consulting firm, to analyze what caused the project to increase in cost and scope.

The city’s obligations

In April 2005, the city signed an agreement with Terrell Timmermann to construct a stormwater detention facility on a portion of the developer’s 290-acre tract of land at the northwest intersection of Pflugerville Parkway and FM 685.

Detention ponds are designed to protect surrounding areas from flooding by temporarily holding a set amount of water while allowing it to slowly drain to another location.

The city entered into an economic development agreement with NewQuest Properties in December 2006 to provide stormwater detention for Stone Hill Town Center, located directly north of Timmermann’s property. City staff planned for the detention pond to retain runoff from both of the properties, Development Services Director Trey Fletcher said.

In order to meet those agreements, the city awarded Klotz Associates a contract to design and construct the Wilbarger Creek detention pond project in September 2007.

Two months later, the city signed second and third agreements with Timmermann to design and construct a number of amenities on the property including roadways, several bridges and a pond.

However, Fletcher said at this point the city is only required to provide stormwater detention for the two properties.

“There is no imminent development [for Timmermann’s property] so that affords the city some flexibility in meeting the landowner’s expectations,” Fletcher said.

And because Timmermann’s land is currently undeveloped, Coleman said the city is meeting its stormwater detention requirements for Stone Hill by allowing water to run on to that property until the detention pond is constructed.

“The amenities don’t necessarily need to be done right this second, because what you would end up with potentially is a really lovely pond with really incredible amenities and not a single thing around it and no way to get to it,” new City Manager Brandon Wade said.

The council’s vision

Coleman said that the scope of the $18.8 million plan was a clear representation of the council’s vision for the project, but that former City Engineer Joe Carpenter had estimated they could have that vision for the budgeted $2.6 million.

“We had always envisioned a constant level pond with a track and buildings and a park around it. We had always envisioned that amenity—we had just been told we could get that amenity for $2.6 million,” Coleman said. “The city was never, ever going to spend $18.8 million on this.”

Fletcher said in the future there is the potential for the council’s original vision of developing the detention pond into an amenity, but that would require additional funding sources and construction would be completed in phases.

“This could be a 20-year project,” he said. “Who does what and who pays for what can be worked out depending on the nature and extent of future development. ”

The lessons learned

According to the H.R. Gray report, Carpenter asked Klotz to increase its scope of work to include amenities outlined in the second and third Timmermann agreements without direction from the city council—causing the project to transform from a detention pond to a retention pond, which constantly maintains a certain level of water.

Between May 2008 and June 2009, four task orders increasing the scope of the project were issued by Carpenter and signed off on by former City Manager David Buesing—excluding one authorized by then Interim City Manager Lauri Gillam—which resulted in higher design fees and estimated construction costs.

Carpenter could not be reached for comment by press time.

Coleman and Wade said the city no longer plans to do task order contracts, which allow smaller contracts to be executed for items within bigger projects. Task orders in the Wilbarger Creek project included site analysis, a traffic study and additional design work.

“From now on we’re going to have very specific, single task– driven projects where we award a contract to design a specific thing not to exceed a certain amount of money,” Wade said. “If you find there’s an issue, you go back to council and ask to modify the contract.”

If the city had written such a contract initially, Klotz would have been charged with designing the budgeted $2.6 million detention pond for a fee of $520,000—20 percent of the cost of construction, which Coleman said is the standard engineering fee.

“When design fees got above that point, they would have had to come back to us and say, ‘The scope is now this and we need more money,’ and the council would have been notified dramatically earlier,” Coleman said. “Because we didn’t do that, we had our former city engineer OKing the work and our former city manager signing off on those task orders, which then caused the city to be responsible for making those payments. That was how the city council never had any knowledge of it. They had all that control and, therefore, nothing had to come back to us.”

By the time the city council learned of the $18.8 million estimated construction cost, the city had committed $1.3 million to Klotz in design fees associated with the project.

“My understanding is the majority of the engineering that was done would have had to have been done for whatever project we end up doing,” Coleman said. “I don’t feel like it was wasted; it was just not authorized by the city council.”

Coleman said that from now on, decisions regarding significant changes to projects will be addressed by the council.

“That was always our expectation,” Coleman said. “We just found out our expectations weren’t always being met. When we’re dealing with the public’s money, we have to be making those final decisions.”