5.3. SR 11-06-2006 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Background of Donation Offer After a presentation to the Energy City Commissioners by KKE and Karges- Faulconbridge on May 17,2006 (see attached minutes) commissioner Overholser swapped business cards with the architect and engineer present. She (commissioner Overholser) lobbied for the use of geothermal heat pumps and a design built on ECONAR Cold-Climate equipment. Numerous phone calls were placed after that date to the engineering firm by both Bob Donley and Mark Kennedy of ECONAR indicating support of the project and offering their assistance. None was ever requested. The design process, simply put, means the design engineer creates a design of a system that he/she feels is right for the application. The engineer receives feedback from the architect and owner and then completes the design. The engineer sometimes utilizes the services of manufacturers of selected components but many times has little contact with them. Even though the final design was completed by the end of July, ECONAR could not find out if they were being specified or even listed as an or-equal until the bid documents were released. The first bid documents received by a bidder was on September 19 (seven bidders received their set that day). ECONAR received a set on Thursday September 28 (along with five other bidders). Thirty-five more bidders received documents after the 28th. Twelve bidders received documents on October 4. In all, seventy-four documents were issued to bidders. ECONAR was in the middle of the receiving time frame. Upon review of the documents it was clear that ECONAR was non-existent in the design and furthermore, non-geothermal products were listed and several other errors were noted. Contact was made to Karges-Faulconbridge to make them aware of the errors ECONAR noted and to request ECONAR be added. The project engineer indicated ECONAR would now need to submit its own data at the conditions set forth in the current design however felt there wasn't any reason ECONAR wouldn't be accepted. During the design process of the Public Safety Building ECONAR was told by the mechanical design firm on that project that ECONAR would not only be included but that its products were being specified. It was not known until the release of the bid documents that ECONAR was excluded. The design firm stated that a change to a Florida Heat Pump (FHP) based design with a gas supplement was made near the end. Since a similar pattern was now emerging with the Library project a decision was made to put forth an offer to the city in the way of product donation. In no way was ECONAR negligent in its efforts to have its products incorporated in either the Public Safety Building or the Library. In both cases ECONAR took the expected steps and followed industry protocol.