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Regular Council Meeting June 8, 2015 Page 7 problems for the City in the coming years? He said City Council and especially the citizens who live on Houston Street deserve answers to these questions. Mr. Godwin said he would go through the presentation and then Mr. Godwin explained a typical project from beginning to end and noted that Mayor Hashmi had covered some of the specifics during his presentation. Mr. Godwin explained part of the engineer's responsibility was to review all bids to make sure that they were complete and accurate, then along with staff make a recommendation to the City Council. Mr. Godwin said once work begins, the initial protection the City has is the in -house inspector Tim Moore who very regularly goes to the site. He explained that sometimes Tim may be out there for 8 hours and other times he may just drive by and make an observation depending on the job and what they are doing. Mr. Godwin said the sheets Council Member Clifford saw were daily logs of where Tim was and what he did, that they were not meant to be an inspection report. Mr. Godwin explained the inspector was always on -site if there was something major going on, such as connecting of pipes and lines being covered. He pointed out that pipe is not covered until inspected and tested. Mr. Godwin said in a lot of cases they will camera a line to see if there are any obstructions and to see if the flow is correct. Mr. Godwin further explained that in addition to in -house inspectors that in this case, that Aaron of HWH was the RPE (representative project engineer). Mr. Godwin said on a monthly basis there was a construction meeting in which case the City, the engineer, and the RPE meet to review the project, the progress for that month to see what work has been done, to see what work has been done acceptably, and once all parties agree that the work has been completed the bill is paid. He said in all cases they only pay 95% of the bill, and keep a retainage of 5% so if there's something at the end of the project that was not adequately done, they have the money and can make the contractor do it. Mr. Godwin said the contractor was not finished and some the work that was done in horrible weather was meant to be temporary. Mr. Godwin complimented in the in -house staff that did the Sperry Street Project and said this crew took care of things when the regular crew could not get to those items and especially helped in emergency situations. He went over the projects that he would be bringing back to Council and said that the City did not have the in -house folks or the ability to adequately inspect an upcoming $22 million. He said he would be coming back to Council to either hire an in -house inspector which he does not recommend or to have a third party inspector through the contractor. Council Member Frierson said they should be really cognitive on the variety of circumstances that had gone into this and obviously staff was working to improve it and he really appreciated staff. Council Member Frierson said Council had been specific that correction and improvements of road were to be minimal. He said part of what they saw today may or may not be a part of that. Council Member Plata said he understood where Council Member Clifford came up with the questions and for the most part agreed with him. He said something seems to have slipped by the wayside. Council Member Jenkins said in looking at all the pictures and going on the tour, he would like to see everything done right. Council Member Lancaster said she had real questions as to why they would want to accept a job that looks like what they had seen. She said it looks like they need to have an outside inspector for these projects and questioned if they go back and fix it would they be paying double. Council Member Lancaster