Park County commissioners went with the low bidder to complete the first phase of a project that will improve the Willwood Road.

Mountain Construction out of Lovell was awarded the bid for $5,786,683.94. The project involves reconstruction of roughly 5 miles of the Willwood Road extending from the U.S. Highway 14A to the 90 degree bends on Lane 14.

On May 29, commissioners held a special called meeting to revisit the award of the project after Commissioner Lloyd Thiel’s initial motion to award it included incorrect legal language, according to County Attorney Bryan Skoric.

Over the course of the meeting, commissioners not only fixed the legal language — the attorney can review a contract but not approve one — but determined to go with the low bidder, Mountain Construction, despite the company making a pricing error in its bid.

At the May 21 meeting commissioners had voted to award the contract to Wilson Bros. out of Cowley for $6,054,795 as the second lowest bidder due to the discrepancies in Mountain Construction’s bid.

But the motion that was made included a mistake — language authorizing Skoric to not only review but approve the contract award. That
necessitated a special meeting to revisit the award of the contract, at which point representatives of both Mountain and Wilson were able to explain their positions and why they should get the contract.

“Our position is we would obviously like to have the project awarded to us,” said Mountain Construction’s Stuart Frost. “We feel that the haul routes with ours would be a lot less impactful to the public, it’s all state highway.”

Mountain also agreed to honor its low bid despite the error committed when transferring a document from Excel to a PDF.

“You can look at this and say, this is a mistake,” Commissioner Lee Livingston said. “There’s got to be some common sense.”

Livingston’s motion to go with Mountain came after Thiel’s motion to go with Wilson died for lack of a second. Thiel was the lone no vote on Livingston’s motion.

“To me what’s most important is the integrity of competitive bidding going forward,” he said. “Where do we draw the line?”

Nick Wilson of Wilson Brothers said they do support the integrity of the bidding process, but he said the company would not protest the county awarding the project to Mountain.

“In general we would defend that strongly, but in this case we can see clearly the bid from Mountain is a clerical error,” he said. “We want to do what’s best for the county as well, so we’ll support whatever decision the county commissioners make.”

Wilson Brothers will provide subcontract earthwork services to Mountain Construction on the project.

Park County Public Works is holding another public meeting for the Willwood Road-Phase 1 project Thursday (tonight) at 7 at the Willwood Irrigation Office at 1306 Road 9 (at the intersection of Wyo. Highway 295 and Lane 13).

Park County, Engineering Associates, and the Contractor (Mountain Construction and Wilson Brothers) will be at the meeting to answer questions on the construction and sequencing.

All are welcome to attend and ask questions.