PORT ANGELES — Clallam County Public Utility District commissioners have awarded a $418,532 bid to a Wyoming company to replace poles and transmission lines in west Port Angeles.
District commissioners voted 3-0 Monday to award the bid to Titan Electric Contracting Inc. of Casper, Wyo.
Titan will install fiberglass poles with distribution and fiber line on 1.8 miles of U.S. Highway 101 right-of-way between Airport Road and Cherry Street in Port Angeles.
Clallam County PUD is rebuilding its transmission lines from Airport Road to a Bonneville Power Administration substation in the city.
“That’s going to be done in two phases, and this is the first phase of that rebuild,” Project Manager Ben Phillips told district commissioners Monday.
The first phase from Airport Road to Cherry Street is scheduled to be completed in October.
Titan’s bid was the lowest of six the PUD received. No bids were submitted by North Olympic Peninsula contractors.
The bid prices ranged from $418,532 on the low end to $977,576 on the high end. The engineer’s estimate was $850,000.
“The range in the bids were kind of an eye-popper,” Board Chairman Will Purser said in the virtual meeting Monday.
Phillips said he and PUD Engineering Manager Mike Hill walked the site with Titan representatives and provided the firm with 22 exhibits.
“It sounds like we’ve covered all the bases,” Purser said.
“We’ve got a well-defined scope, we’ve done a job walk, we’ve circled back to make sure that they’re comfortable with their bid, and we’ve got a good change order process.”
The scope of work includes pole replacement with distribution and fiber line transfers, according to a PUD memo.
Clallam Clallam PUD obtained permission from the city of Port Angeles to complete the work within environmentally sensitive areas in the Tumwater and Valley Creek ravines.
In a March 5 letter to the PUD, Port Angeles Community Development Manager Emma Bolin said the project met the “reasonable use” exemption for environmentally sensitive areas.
The contractor will replace 28 PUD utility poles with new poles between 60 and 80 feet in height along U.S. Highway 101, Bolin said.
“Several of the poles are within the Valley Creek and Tumwater Creek stream ravines, which are defined in Port Angeles Municipal Code as a locally-unique feature with 25-foot environmentally sensitive area (ESA) buffers,” Bolin wrote in a letter to Phillips.
“It has been determined that your request qualifies as an environmentally sensitive area exception … as a proposal that is considered a utility replacement not further disturbing an ESA.”
The fiberglass poles will have a life span of more than 60 years and will be placed within 5 feet of the existing wood poles, Bolin said.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
