From
Anda Upchurch
Title
Contract Change Order/Amendment #12 with Itron, Inc. for the City-Wide installation of our Automatic Metering Infrastructure (AMI) system in the amount of $254,795.22
Presenter
Gabriel Johnson, Director of Public Works
Recommended Action
Approve
Analysis
Several years ago the Public Works Department recognized that the water metering industry, which had been working on evolving Automatic Metering Infrastructure (AMI) for some time, had matured to the point that the additional efficiencies for the city and customer benefits to be derived from such a system could not be ignored. These advantages include 1) elimination of employees having to physically go to each of the almost 50,000 water customers each month to obtain a meter reading for billing purposes by having readings electronically transferred to a central server. 2) hourly meter reading instead of monthly, that will help with customers concerns over high water bills by the ability to pinpoint the day and time of high water usage, allowing the customer to relate the time of high usage to some event causing the excess usage. 3) Customer interface where the customer can log into their account and monitor their water usage from their personal computer, this giving them more control over their water consumption. 4) Such monitoring can only enhance our water conservation efforts which are state mandated and essential to the future of our water deficient area.
After analyzing numerous proposals, a select committee of City employees guided by an expert consultant, selected Itron, Inc. for the installation of Advance Metering Infrastructure in the city. The entire cost of the system proposed was $11,242,204.23 based on the detailed description of the materials, labor, software and managed services provided by the through its' consultant. The proposal made it clear that the entire project was to be in phases to be fully completed within a 5 year period.
For the initial funding of Phase 1, the City budgeted $1,250,000 but had also applied for and was approved by the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) was offered an interest subsided loan in the amount of $4,000,000, giving us a total budget of $5,250,000 for Phase 1 in our FY15.
Staff requested also to utilize meter replacement funding which is included in the annual operating budgets which will allow for broken meters in the system to be replaced with the AMI technology.
Change orders/Amendments No. 2-6 were additional funding requests per yearly budgets approved by Council.
In November of 2016 Council approved change order/amendment 7 for an additional $3,000,000 because the contractor was ahead of schedule on this project. Staff requested to allow the contractor to continue without an interruption in installations.
In November of 2017 Council approved change Order/amendment 8 for an additional $1,959,158 for hardware purchases and installation.
Change Order/Amendment No. 9 increased the overall contract by $17,000 to migrate the software used under the contract from Itron’s MV-RS software to FCS software. Amendments No. 10 and 11 provided for time extensions to the contract.
The current request for Change Order/Amendment 12 with Itron Inc. will increase the contract amount by $254,795.22. This request includes the annual AMI System maintenance for FY 2019/2020, in the amount of $130,000, and for additional hardware purchases and installation services through March 31, 2020.
The total revised Itron contract amount will be $14,324,550.22.
Financial Consideration
Funds are available in FY 2019/2020 budget:
1. $130,000 for annual AMI System maintenance in the General Fund, IT Administration,Computer Software Maintenance (151010-63165)
2. $124,795.22 for hardware and installation in the Water Wastewater Fund, Revenue Management, Water Meters (361010-68280)