Using a different type of contracting process, Park County officials intend to replace a flood-struck bridge on the upper South Fork before the year is over.

The county is fast-tracking the roughly $670,000 project on Hunter Creek Road through a “design-build” agreement, in which Pryor Mountain Engineering (A Stahly Company) is handling both the design and construction of the new bridge.

The roughly 70-year-old bridge over Boulder Creek — which was already slated for replacement — was damaged by floodwaters and debris in mid-July. It was “one of those wild, freak events,” Park County Engineer Brian Edwards said last month. Some residents were stranded for roughly a day and “we almost lost the bridge,” Edwards said.

Though road and bridge crews were able to get it reopened to local traffic the following day, the structure along Road YXD remains vulnerable, Edwards said at an Aug. 19 meeting.

Commissioners ultimately decided it was better to replace the bridge sooner rather than later and to forgo the typical bidding process.

Competing proposals

Ahead of last month’s decision, county staff reached out to local engineering firms and sought proposals for the new bridge.

“We cast a big net saying that we were open to anything,” Edwards said.

Three firms replied with proposals: Pryor Mountain Engineering (Stahly), Engineering Associates (EA) and Short Elliott Hendrickson (SEH) Inc.

All three companies are “highly qualified and very capable,” Edwards said, but it became something of a two-horse race when EA and Pryor Mountain offered more competitive prices on the design (both landing between $112,000 and $114,000).

Pryor Mountain and EA each said they were willing to conduct a traditional design-bid-build process, in which they would design the bridge and then help the county seek competitive bids from contractors for the actual construction. That would likely involve the work taking place in early spring, ahead of the high waters that arrive in late spring and early summer.

However, Pryor Mountain also offered a $670,450 “turnkey” price to complete the entire job by the end of this year. That’s the design-build option the commissioners picked — though only after some discussion and debate.

Competitive bids?

Erik Wachob of EA said his firm felt the project would be best served by competitively bidding the roughly $500,000 to $575,000 worth of construction work; Pryor Mountain’s turnkey price effectively includes $558,500 for construction. 

Edwards said he typically prefers to seek competitive bids, but felt this was an unusual situation, given the urgency of the replacement. He told commissioners that waiting to go out for bids would be “a roll of the dice.”

“Who knows how it’ll go — if we even get bidders at that time of the year,” he said, calling Pryor Mountain’s offer “pretty attractive.”

A couple commissioners indicated that they preferred the speedier option, given the potential for further trouble with the existing structure.

“I can just look at the worst scenario: We lose that bridge and we got people [impacted] on the South Fork and we have to explain why we wanted to wait,” said Commissioner Scott Mangold. “So I don’t want to do that.”

Commissioner Lloyd Thiel said he believed it might be cheaper to go through a bidding process, but he believed there was an opportunity to cut through some federal red tape with the U.S. Forest Service if the county handles the replacement as an emergency. Thiel also said he thought Pryor Mountain’s price was on point, though “it’s a lot of damn money, no doubt, for a small bridge.”

The board unanimously voted to hire Pryor Mountain to design and build the new structure on Hunter Creek Road, with Commissioner Dossie Overfield abstaining.

A longer, higher bridge

The new structure will be built higher on the embankment and stretch the span from 27 feet to roughly 50 feet. 

It’s possible the county could save tens of thousands of dollars along the way by having road and bridge crews handle some of the dirt work and potentially by reusing girders from a former bridge on the Lower Greybull River.

At last week’s meeting, commissioners approved the gist of a contract with Pryor Mountain while some final details are ironed out.

During the project, crews will set up a temporary bridge that should be able to handle any of the typical loads — whether that be a hunter accessing the Shoshone National Forest or a rancher accessing their residence, Edwards said at the Sept. 1 meeting.

“So there will be uninterrupted access to Hunter Creek Road” throughout the project, he said. Further, “the actual replacement of the bridge should be right after hunting season anyway, or at least the busier part of hunting season,” Edwards said.

He said the county would work to communicate with everyone when the switch is made from the old bridge to the new. The site is about 35 miles southwest of Cody.