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Mt. Prospect awards engineering contract for Kensington detention ponds

Mount Prospect will benefit from economies of scale as it prepares to rehabilitate four retention basins at the Kensington Business Center.

This week, the village board approved a contract with the Ciorba Group Inc., which has worked with the village in the past, to provide engineering design services, at a cost not to exceed $96,759.

By bundling the design of the four projects together, the village will get a better price than it would have obtained by focusing on each basin individually.

When the Kensington Business Center was developed in the 1980s, the annexation agreement required the village to assume responsibility for maintaining the silt in the 12 basins within the business park.

That includes maintaining the design depth and the integrity of the inflow and outflow structures.

Since 2000, the village has rehabilitated seven of the ponds, leaving five left to be done.

Public Works Director Sean Dorsey told the village board Tuesday that the village committed funds for this year to design and construct improvements at one of the ponds. The traditional approach has been to do both design and construction in one year.

However, he said, "Earlier this year, we felt we were a little light on the funding to do any of the remaining ponds, in part due to increased costs for earth excavation, sediment disposal and trucking costs. However, we had an idea that we did have enough funding to do a package design deal."

By putting several ponds together in a package and asking a designer to reach solutions for all four at once, the village could drive the design costs down.

The village asked Ciorba to submit a proposal, which they submitted to the village's satisfaction.

Dorsey noted that the prices for this type of work have steadily declined. He said in 2011, the design cost per acre of pond was $39,000. That dropped to $27,000 in 2012. By bundling the four ponds together, the cost is $16,700 per acre.

Trustee A. John Korn quipped, "It's too bad we don't have more ponds, because they would be doing the work for nothing pretty soon."

Once each of the ponds is ready for construction, the village intends to negotiate a construction engineering contract.

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