Committee approves $299,754 emergency contract change for Debke Juvenile Center electrical work

The Financial Administrative Committee voted to approve a contract modification on Aug. 28 for the Debke Juvenile Center emergency generator and electrical improvements project.
Carl Courard, director of Facilities and Construction Services, told the committee the modification to agreement 23007 with Powerlink Electric of Vernon Hills, Illinois, is required because project costs exceeded the 10% change-order threshold and to resolve an electrical code update and an arc-flash safety issue.
Courard said the $299,754.71 change raises the contract to $2,062,414.03, or about 24.2% above the original award, and that the electrical changes were identified by an inspector after the new equipment had been installed. He said the county must address grounding work and upsized breakers caused by a transformer consolidation directed by ComEd; the transformer consolidation was not contemplated in the original design.
Member Maine moved to approve the modification and Member Clark seconded; committee members voted in favor and the motion passed.
Courard said the work is necessary to make the electrical system safe and to allow upcoming ARPA-funded work at the site to proceed without delay. He described a 60-day engineering effort to design the corrective work and said the system is currently functioning but required the change to remain code-compliant when ComEd’s transformer work is completed.
The committee approved the modification by voice vote; Courard said staff will complete the corrective work to support the Debke/WRS project schedule.