ROMO 326235 - Virtual PreBid Conference-20260806_110554-Meeting Recording August 6, 2026, 5:05PM 37m 8s

Randall, Kate started transcription

Randall, Kate 0:03 Okay, it's recording now. Okay. Okay, great. All righty. Amy, if you wouldn't mind just saying a couple words about this project before we go into the presentation. Yeah, so we at the park, so Rose and I are both Romo or Rocky Mountain National Park employees. We're actually based out of the east side of the park, so out of the s s Parkside, but we do work over here as well and support this side. We're really excited about this project. It's going to rehab this visitor center. This is the only visitor center and it's our administrative, so kind of our headquarters for this whole side of the park and all the operations here. While we're all one team, we do have like dedicated employees that when we work on the west side, or you also see Colorado River District is the official name for this area of the park. But so this is like a very significant building for our operations. It's kind of the first welcome for our visitors to come in, make contact with our staff.

see the exhibit, owners plan their trip as well. But then the administrative side of the building is, you know, where all of our leadership and some of our staff work out of. And it's, like I said, it's kind of the heart of this side of the park. So it's a cool building. It was built during the Mission 66 era. So in the 60s, it hasn't had a major upgrade since then, but there's been some evolution, like this auditorium was added on later. So there's some few changes like that, but obviously being built in the 60s, it's due for some.

some upgrades and replacements too. It's like major systems, major components. So you'll see how that's kind of the focus of the project to help renew those components of it with current systems and improve like comfort and air quality and thermal efficiency and along with accessibility, addressing, you know, concerns throughout the exterior and interior of the building. Following this project and like kind of tying in at the end, there's a new exhibit full design that will be put in place. So prepping for that is all all part of this project. And then some like minor floor plan updates to help our flow with both visitors and then our staff use of the area. So this is a very impactful project. This building is significant. It's eligible as a National Historic Register. So compliance is, you know, something that there'll be our compliance team will be heavily involved in throughout as we're making any design, if any changes are needed or whatnot, but compliance is complete for the design that we have.

But.

Yeah, we're just, we're very excited. This has been a long time coming to get this project to this point. And we're excited to work with hopefully one of you guys either on the phone or in the room. And it's going to be a huge improvement for this side of the park. Thanks. Thank you, Amy. Thank you.

Alrighty, so we'll tell you, I'm going to tell you a little bit more about the project, just kind of a brief overview. And then Tim is going to go into some of the contract details and bidding details. So, all right, so Okay, I think we can probably start here. So for the folks in the room, you, oh, this wasn't going. So hold on a second. Let me just say something before you get started. Yeah, let me.

I'm going to ask that everybody hold their questions on this and write them down. And because we are in the solicitation period right now, I have to make every question available to all the bidders. And this is not a mandatory pre-bid conference. So there may be some people who aren't here that will need to hear your questions. So write your questions down, e-mail them to me afterwards, and I will answer them in an amendment. So, okay. Okay, great. Folks online, are you seeing the slide now that says project location and access?

Eric Bakanowski 4:31 Yes.

Randall, Kate 4:32 Okay, perfect. Great. Okay. All righty. So for the folks in the room who made it here, you know that we're about two hours, two hours, 10 minutes from Denver if there's no traffic. We're about five minutes from the town of Grand Lake, about 25 minutes from Grand Bay. Right now, we are about a quarter of a mile from the MP

Marc Donnot 4:32 Yes.

Randall, Kate 4:59 Some things to keep in mind with that gate, it does back up. So there's time to entry into the park. So it, you know, before people are allowed to go in, they back up and so that can clog access to the the visitor center at certain times of day. So just something you need to keep in mind.

And then Trail Ridge Road, there's seasonal closure of Trail Ridge Road, and that usually closes. It's depending on snowfall, but it's usually about October and opens up again in like May, late May, is it? Generally like mid-October to Memorial Day weekend-ish. It's one that I remember for this.

Weather dependent.

Amy, is there anything more you want to say about the gate? Yes, the time to entry, we have that in place. That basically, if you're not familiar, it's like a permit requirement between the hours of 9 to 2 to enter the park, you have to have a time to entry permit. And so Kay was referring to, you know, sometimes leading right up to that period.

There's a bigger rush of people trying to get in that can cause a longer line. And then again, like right after two, there can be a period of a longer line. This side of the park is much less busier than the east side of the park. So while there are like instances of that being a temporary issue, I wouldn't like plan on it being a daily like significant impact. That's really like during our kind of peak season, holiday, weekend type time frames where we see more significant fabric impacts.

No, not. I mean, the only thing I would add is we do have mix-ups with deliveries where they go. So there's just something to keep in mind. You guys come a little closer to the speaker over here. Yeah.

I was going to say with Trailer Ridge Road, sometimes we do get mix-ups with deliveries as far as what gate they're supposed to go to. And obviously, if they're trying to come here and they end up on this, which happens. Okay. So just something to be aware of. Yeah, that's more like working with your subs and your suppliers to make sure that they understand the crew might be closed when they're trying to deliver or you know, semi trailers cannot come down to switch backs all the way to make it down here. So they need to be generally planning to come around 70 and up through like winter parking in Green B and such. Great.

Folks online, can you hear some all the speakers in the room?

Marc Donnot 7:35 Yes.

Randall, Kate 7:37 Okay, great. Okay.

Eric Bakanowski 7:37 Yeah, sure. K. Thanks.

Ted Hamilton 7:38 So far, we're able to. Thank you.

Randall, Kate 7:40 Okay, great. Thank you. Okay, so you'll note a couple of different stars on just that location map there. The bigger star is the visitor center itself. We've got a couple of like little satellites to this project. And mostly these are just the, these are the temporary operations. So because we have the visitor center here, we're going to need to have that function continue on this side of the park so that visitor contact is going to move to that star that's kind of north of here along Trail Ridge Road. So that is on the other side of the MPS gate. So there's some issues with that. And then the one over to the West is where there will be a couple of trailers for offices, for all of the folks that are currently office here. So, and we'll get into that in the future slides. Okay.

Alrighty, so just expanding on access a little here. There are a couple of things I want to make sure everyone is aware of. We do have a horse trail that goes through the site. That's right here.

And so we'll have continued access for that. And in the in the contract documents, you'll note that it does say to turn off equipment when the horses are passing. So just something you're going to need to keep in mind. And also we have the harvest and ditch that runs through and so we need to keep access open to that and keep flow open on that. So the ditch company has to come through and clean it from time to time. And so I just want to make sure that everyone's aware of that.

Okay, so as far as just a little bit of history on the visitor center itself, and Amy touched on this before, but it is a Mission 66 sort of mid-century modern building with additions that were done in 1989 and 1999.

including this auditorium.

It is eligible for listing on the National Register, and it is treated as such, as if it were historic. So that is how we treat it here in the Park Service when it is eligible. There are three nodes. There's the admin node up here. There's the, oh, sorry.

A little trouble with the, it's not queuing here. Hold on one second.

I know.

Hold on one second. We're just having a little trouble with the slides.

And you have two of our screens going.

There is one other screen.

Area.

OK, there we go. All right. Thanks, Amy. OK. So as far as the notes go, we have the admin wing up there. We've got the visitor center in the middle, and then we have the comfort station. And so that's kind of how we we refer to the building. Let's see.

just worth noting that, you know, the design documents follow the interior, the interior standards for the treatment of historic properties. The treatment is rehabilitation, but you'll know that we are keeping as much historic fabric as possible.

And so it is a very sort of sensitive treatment of the building.

All right. Anything more in history?

Okay. All right. The purpose of this project. So Amy also touched a little bit on this, but some big drivers are accessibility, code compliance, improving the operational and energy efficiency of the building, enhancing the functionality to better serve the current occupants and improve visitor experience and opportunities.

A big part of this is following this project, all of the exhibits will be redone. And so that's in process right now, the design on that. And so it will very much change the experience in the visitor center.

very much do. Alrighty, and then restore the building's historic character, including addressing the historically incompatible alterations. And we'll talk a little bit more about this, but that really is the roof on the comfort station, which used to be a flat roof, like the rest of the building, but after it had, I think it was some issues of leaking or small collapse, they did the gabled roof that it is now. And so, so we're going back to the original roof line. And then also to improve fire protection and security and to improve building connectivity. And so the The fiber optic line is a big part of this project, and so just kind of improving all of the IT systems here.

Okay, project sequencing. So I wanted to make sure that everyone was well aware of this and this is the Relocating the staff to the off-site trailers. And so in this, the top right of this slide, you'll see the location for those couple of trailers there.

And so that is, there's a couple of trailers, there's furniture, there's two containers, temporary utilities, and just the actual move itself. So there's kind of a lot wrapped into that. You know, this sort of same for the visitor center, which is in the Harveson Meadows area. So that's.

on the lower right of that slide there. And so that is, again, it's a trailer that will be used for merchandising, exhibits, a reservation desk. And then there will be a portable toilet and a shed.

and then moving and furniture also associated with that. And then we will also have, oh, is it hard to see? Okay, sorry.

So we'll coordinate with the exhibit installation contract. And so they'll come in after we've punched out this project. But during the during the construction, there's a couple of different coordination points where that team's going to need to come in and make sure that everything's matching up just with the electrical with the ceiling and just the layout of the ceiling.

just so that everything kind of is able to go in right. So I'm just making sure that we are tracking with that. And then let's see, we've also got the server, so we're transferring the server over to a new server. We've got the fiber, so just minimal transition downtime for the park on this side, 'cause they rely on that. And then we've got the period of performance.

which will be adjusted based on when the award is, but it's right now we're looking at November 1st to May 1st. I just said, like the server room, so it's shifting slightly within the admin side of the building, but this server room is basically the hub.

for the other facilities in this area. So going to the maintenance building and going to the entrance station, and that's why running new lines there is a critical component. And so all of our other operations depend on that server. So planning that out effectively and making sure it's a short of outage as possible is.

going to be really important for keep everyone happy and continue to work. Thank you.

Alrighty, so some of the resources, this is really everything that's in the big package right now. And so you've got the plans, you've got the specs. As an appendix, the specs, you've got the cultural resource survey, the hazmat assessment, the interpretive design package, and that was an early version of the interpretive design package, but it gives you an idea.

the temporary relocation plan, the mock-up list, and the original as constructed drawings for this building.

Okay, so we'll just kind of go over the scope of work real quick. We're just doing this in a couple of slides. You know, of course, there's a lot more that we aren't covering, but for now, just the big picture is, you know, we're going to rehabilitate this building in accordance with the Secretary of Interior standards for the treatment of historic properties.

We're going to provide the temporary facilities and we're going to relocate the Park Service employees and the visitor services during the construction. We will modernize the building systems, including the mechanical, plumbing, electrical, connectivity, lightning protection, building security, fire suppression and alarm.

So now first kind of focusing on that admin wing, that node one. For this part of the building, we will improve the envelope with added wall insulation, new energy efficient, thermally broken windows that match the historic appearance. Note, the last bullet on here is a bid option to sort of upgrade those windows if we're able.

Remove the ceilings to install new building systems and add ceiling installation to meet our current code requirements. We're going to reconfigure the office spaces with select new walls and doors. And that's sort of modest what we're doing there, but just those small tweaks will help quite a bit with just on being able to accommodate staff, renovate staff restrooms and update the kitchenette. And that's also just going to modernize that and then improve it for accessibility. Install new interior finishes throughout, restore the historic finishes by repainting or refinishing wood surfaces.

and cleaning and repointing masonry. So again, that bid option is an upgrade on the windows. All right, node two. So a big part of getting this right is making sure we're able to keep that ceiling that is in the visitor center that is a contributing.

feature and so a lot of time and energy has gone into that through the design process. We'll also be installing new interior finishes and refinishing the wood surfaces. We'll be applying a UV film to some of the storefront windows to reduce the solar heat gain.

We'll be adding a glazed wood partition to separate the exhibits from the wilderness desk. We'll be installing new below floor utilities to support the building systems. And again, we're coordinating with the exhibits. So node three, this is a comfort station. As I had mentioned, we're going to be redoing the roof, going back to that flat.

roof, and it's going to be kind of a full renovation of that, of the interior of that building, just to modernize it and to make it a little more accessible. All right. And then for the exterior, we'll be improving accessibility and drainage throughout the site. We're redoing all the paving, both the sidewalks and the parking lot areas.

We will be enhancing the gathering areas. We've got one picnic area out there, and then we've got another interpretive area that we're expanding upon over there. We will be repainting, masonry cleaning, and then these light poles, which are shown in one of these pictures, are a contributing feature as well, and so we will make them compliant with the dark sky requirements. So that brings us to the contract portion. And so if Tim wants to talk a little bit. Can I just add one thing, just for your awareness, do you recognize that this is Green Lake, Colorado?

So it's much different than Denver climate wise. If you're familiar like for mechanical, like work climate zone 7 here. You know, winter's can get down to minus 30. It's a pretty routine. A lot of the snow tends to come and stay warm here. We don't have as much of the snow melts.

cycle that we have on the Denver or P side. So just winter is real here. So just planning a touring week for that and your sequencing of work, understanding what can be done during what time of year and such is going to be according to the success of the project.

Mhm.

Okay, I'm going to talk a little bit about the actual contractual information, the proposal.

Pre-proposal, the questions are due seven days prior to the offers being due. So these proposals are due August 31st. It's a pretty quick turnaround on this. So don't wait till the last minute to get your questions in and, you know, seven days before.

give us 50 questions, you know, that's kind of pace it out that way. What I...

What I'm going to do is issue an amendment every, you know, every three or four days, something like that, depending on how many questions come in. I don't want to pepper you guys with too many amendments and drive you crazy. So I'll wait till I get a good amount of questions. And And typically in a longer solicitation, I'll issue it every Friday, an amendment, but we'll just see how this one goes.

Submissions are electronic only.

This is a firm fixed price contract, NAICS code 236220 and it's a total small business set aside. Period of performance is 548 days from the notice to proceed and contract value is between 5 and 10 million.

Much closer to five, I think.

Anyway, the basis of the ward is a best value continuum. This isn't a sealed bid. I think the next slide goes into that.

It says government may reject any proposals if it's in the government's best interest.

Let me go to the next slide. Yeah, this is not a sealed bread. This is not lowest price technically acceptable. This is best value trade-off. So we could go with a higher price proposal if it's technically superior. That's what that means.

So volume one, we had, there's seven evaluation factors in this. Now, I don't know how many federal projects that you guys have submitted for, but the main thing I want to get across to you today is I'm not going to go through every evaluation factor.

you know, drone on through there. I have in the past and I just get glazed over looks and that doesn't do any good. So I know, I just want to let you guys know that section L get to that. I'm going to go ahead. I'll come back to these slides. Here it is, Section L. So this is just one of the factors in Section L. Section L is what we want you guys to provide. Section M is how we will evaluate that. So for every factor, in Section L, look at the factor in Section M. You know, on this sheet, what I did is I took the factor 1 to Section L and put it right next to Section M. And you might want to do that with the proposal. Go in there and put them right next to each other so you can see how we will evaluate.

There's things that we ask for in section L. And how this is going to work is after the proposals are submitted, I will assemble a technical evaluation panel, usually three to five people, something like that. And they'll go through all your proposals and they will see if you have provided everything that is listed in Section L. So what I did and what I'm going to give you guys is this next slide. These are These are, this is an example of some of the questions that the evaluators will look at when they're looking at your proposal. And this is directly tied, there's nothing new in this information. It's directly tied to Section L and Section M. But when they look at your proposal, I'm going to give them instructions to look at the proposal as it relates to the evaluation factors. Don't compare each other's proposals. You know, don't compare one company to another company. Just look at the evaluation factors. And With these questions, if you...

prepare your proposal and kind of use these. This is just factor one. I have about 5 pages of these that I'm going to issue in the First Amendment. It's kind of like I'm the high school science teacher that gives you the test questions before, you know, the test. All you have to do is make sure that you have done everything in these questions, that will get your proposal to an acceptable level. That's not a good or an outstanding level. It's just providing what we asked for. And I'm going to go back to the...

Ratings here.

So we got outstanding, good, acceptable, marginal, and unacceptable. I cannot award if you're marginal or unacceptable. And you will get a marginal or unacceptable if you do not include everything in section L. You know, if you completely miss some things, I could eliminate you from the competitive range.

And, you know, just throw out your proposal. And I hate doing that because I know you can all do this project. And it's so important when you're writing your proposals to pay attention to this. I can't stress this enough. If you do everything that We ask for, you see the definition of acceptable right there, proposal meets requirements. That's what that'll give you. If you want to get up to the good level or the outstanding level, you have to give us something above and beyond what we're asking for. So I, and you know, I don't know what an example that might be. Amy mentioned kind of the challenges of working in Grand County in here. Maybe if you go into further detail on how you will address some of these challenges, maybe we'll give you a strength for that, you know, and that'll move that factor up to the good category.

The definition for outstanding is multiple strengths. Now we have to weigh that with weaknesses that we may give you, but my, I would love to have everybody at least acceptable. You know, so please pay attention to that and please look at The questions that I will post in the First Amendment, if you follow that.

You know, that's that's the first, that's the biggest step in here, and...

What else can I say about that? Can I just add? Yeah. While we like highlighted some like specific topics to address, like that, like we think is, you know, worth calling out, don't forget to like give the general overview, your general approach to the project. Like don't get too focused on.

the specifics and forget the big picture. Because we want to be able to understand that you know what you're getting mentioned, you have a good plan, and that kind of stuff. Yes, yes, absolutely.

Um...

What else can I say? I feel like I want to just beat this up so much, but I can't. Just use this as a checklist. Go through your proposal. Make sure you hit everything because the evaluators will ding you if you don't.

And my intention is to award on initial offers. So that means I'm not going to open negotiations or discussions.

Unless I have to, unless everybody forgets something and I'm left with a bunch of marginal proposals, and then I'll have to open negotiations. But I know you're not going to do that. All right.

So, in any...

Probably skipping ahead here. This is the contract price schedule. This is all lump sum. We have three main line items here, the rehab of the admin, auditorium, comfort station, the site work, and the temporary facilities and furniture move. And we also have an option here Thermally broken steel windows.

So price those accordingly, all lump sum. This is not a tax exempt project. Include all your taxes in there.

Solicitations. So send all your questions to myself and Bruce Beck.

And we, I...

We'll get those answered as quickly as possible on here, but I don't want to, like I said earlier, I don't want to issue an amendment every day because you have to acknowledge each amendment in the proposal.

Responses to questions that may be stated during the pre-solicitation site visit do not change the solicitation document. And that's kind of why we don't answer questions here, just in case we say the wrong thing. You know, we need to be able to look at your question and verify the answer and give you a good answer.

Um, that's a reason for that, and...

Okay.

Yeah, don't don't call me.

Alright, e-mail me.

Yeah, there you go.

OK, when did I have is that the last of my slides?

Okay.

All right, well, I hope I beat up that section L section a lot because it's so important, you know.

Talk to your proposal writers and really drive it home.

Okay. Thanks.

Anything.

All right. All right, we're going to do our site walk now. So we're going to go to zone one, do the administrative wing, then to zone 2, then zone 3, we'll do the exterior. And then we're going to probably caravan over to the fiber optic connection, the maintenance building there. So like where it comes in, and then we'll go over to the housing loop.

And then lastly, we'll go over to the Harbison Meadows picnic site where we've got the visitor contact. That requires going through the gate. And so I think our approach there is to go all in a row through the gate. Is that right? Yes.

Yes.

Perfect. Okay.

I just have a couple of general questions about.

Are we able to take pictures? Oh, of course. Yes, please. Yeah. Yeah. And if you need to come back for a second, my next question. Yeah. If you need to come back for a second site visit, I'm sure, you know, just send me an e-mail and we can arrange that throughout going on.

just understand that we're an hour and a half with you and have busy schedules too. So the more notice that you can give us, the better that either like one of us can come over or we can try to get somebody over here to be open. I wonder if we can, because you guys are probably going to go and contact subs and subs are going to want to see the site.

Right. So it's more than likely we're going to need a second site visit. So I'm wondering.

maybe the end of next week or something like that, or the beginning of the following week. You know, this is such a tight solicitation period that we have to figure out something, but we'll figure out something for yourselves. Okay.

Just one quick question. I'm sure it's in the documents, but any predators that need to be taken into consideration for some of this for fiber optic in the woods? I mean, do we have any tree like birds, nesting from what we need to worry about, moons, elk, bear, rattlesnakes?

Morris is an excellent question for you to e-mail me. OK. Yes, I just. No, that that is good.

Yeah, that's.

so that we can complete surveys as necessary. Main animals over here are moose, elk, deer, bears. So being mindful of your construction waste and having bear-proof trash can for any like food-related or scented stuff. Are there a lot of bears? Yeah, right.

Just no rattlesnakes here. Might say a garter snake. That's it. Oh, you're saying the what? Rattlesnakes. Yeah. But yeah, it's going to be more of the moose, elk, and bears. Perfect.

It's up. Okay.

Eric Bakanowski 35:32 Quick, quick question. Sorry to interrupt there. Are there any, excuse me, preferred contract providers such as fire alarm monitoring or your fiber optic connectivity IT department? Do you have preferred contractors for that?

Randall, Kate 35:47 Stops.

I think that should be an e-mail question. Yeah, if you wouldn't mind emailing us that question.

Eric Bakanowski 35:56 Okay, thank you.

Randall, Kate 35:58 Stop.

Okay. All right. So everybody online, I think we're going to go on the site walk now and we'll probably end this presentation now. I have the recording. I'll post that with the First Amendment and I'll post these slides so you have those also. But in But please, like I said, feel free to ask away via e-mail to myself and Bruce Beck, and we'll get those answered for you. Thank you so much for joining the call. Yeah, great. Thank you, everyone who's online. We appreciate your interest in this project.

Eric Bakanowski 36:40 Thanks, all. Have a great day.

Marc Donnot 36:43 Thank you.

Randall, Kate 36:50 We're here now.

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