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- 6ab1d8924f7293197057fd29
- User Id
- 10cf9d37-e809-41a2-81b3-be02123afdff
- Content
- SCA Consultants - Request for Clarification - Water Wells 2 & 4 - Bid Item No. 13, Electrical and Instrumentation
Five items. Items 2, 3 and 4 affect price.
ITEM 1. The CIVCAST portal and Instructions to Bidders 7.03 give different deadlines for written questions.
The CIVCAST Questions tab for this Project displays: “The deadline to ask questions is 10/02/2026 11:45 PM.” The Invitation, under Obtaining the Bidding Documents, states: “Please submit questions for this project at least 7 business days prior to bid opening through www.civcastusa.com in the Q&A portal,” and seven business days before Tuesday, October 13, 2026 is Friday, October 2, 2026, which agrees with the portal. Instructions to Bidders 7.03 states that “Questions received less than seven days prior to the date for opening of Bids may not be answered,” which against the same bid date is Tuesday, October 6, 2026. A Bidder working from Instructions to Bidders 7.03 alone would believe two further business days remained.
REQUEST: Please confirm by Addendum that the operative deadline for written questions is the posted 11:45 PM, Friday, October 2, 2026, and that Instructions to Bidders 7.03 is superseded for this solicitation, so that no Bidder relies on the later date.
ITEM 2. No short circuit, protective device coordination or arc flash study is specified, while the switchboard breakers are specified to reduce arc flash incident energy.
The switchboard section requires that “Breakers shall have LSIG trip unit with an alternate maintenance setting switch for reducing arc flash incident energy levels.” An energy-reducing maintenance setting is set against a calculated incident energy, and no calculation is called for: the terms arc flash study, short circuit study, coordination study and power system study appear nowhere in the Specifications, no Division 26 section governs such a study, and Bid Item No. 13 does not name one. The system these settings protect is not a simple one. Bid Item No. 13 establishes an 800 ampere main switchboard at Water Well 2 and a 600 ampere main switchboard at Water Well 4, each with a manual transfer switch and generator termination cabinet, each feeding a NEMA 3R 480:2,400 volt step-up isolation transformer of 450 kVA and 400 kVA respectively, a 2,400 volt VFD breaker enclosure and a NEMA 3R 6-pulse variable frequency drive serving a 2,300 volt three-phase motor. Nothing in the Contract Documents states the available fault current at either service point, the basis for the interrupting and short-circuit current ratings of the two switchboards, or how protective devices are to be coordinated across the step-up transformers to the medium-voltage drives.
REQUEST: Please confirm whether a short circuit, protective device coordination and arc flash hazard analysis is required of the Contractor for both well sites. If it is, please state the Bid Item under which it is to be priced and the standard to which it is to be performed, and please provide the serving utility’s available short-circuit current and X/R ratio at each 480/277 volt service point so that the switchboard ratings and the breaker maintenance settings can be established.
ITEM 3. Bid Item No. 13 includes a named third party’s programming services with no stated basis for pricing them.
Bid Item No. 13, Electrical and Instrumentation, is measured for payment on a lump sum basis and states: “This bid item includes programming services by Supertech Automation for integrating the proposed well site into the City’s existing SCADA system, including reprogramming of the existing PLCs at the well sites and modification of the existing SCADA HMI.” No allowance amount, no not-to-exceed figure and no pass-through mechanism is stated for those services, and the Contract Documents contain no scope of services, point count or schedule for them. Bidders cannot price another firm’s services on a lump sum item without a stated basis, and no two Bids for Bid Item No. 13 will presently mean the same thing.
REQUEST: Please state how Supertech Automation’s programming services are to be carried in Bid Item No. 13 — as a fixed allowance of a stated amount, as a direct pass-through at cost, or as the Contractor’s own subcontract — and, if the Contractor is to subcontract them, please issue Supertech Automation’s scope of services and a contact so that a quotation can be obtained before the Bid.
ITEM 4. The division of responsibility between the named programming services and the Contractor’s control and SCADA scope is not stated.
Bid Item No. 13 places “instrumentation, SCADA hardware, junction boxes, fittings, appurtenances, and accessories” in the Contractor’s scope at both wells. The Conduit Schedules show new Well Pump Control Panels CP-01-002 and CP-01-004 fed from panelboards LP-01-002 and LP-01-004, each receiving twenty-two conductors and a twisted shielded pair from its well pump terminal box, and the Well 4 Conduit Schedule carries a CAT6e run from CP-01-004 to the EXISTING PLC. The named services are described as reprogramming of the existing PLCs and modification of the existing SCADA HMI.
REQUEST: Please confirm that the new Well Pump Control Panels, the new field instrumentation and the SCADA hardware named in Bid Item No. 13 are furnished, assembled, configured, field tested and commissioned by the Contractor, and that the named programming services are limited to reprogramming the existing PLCs and modifying the existing SCADA HMI. Please also confirm which party is responsible for point-to-point verification between the new control panels and the existing PLCs.
ITEM 5. The Conduit Schedules carry a transformer tag collision at Water Well 4 and repeated destination errors at both wells.
On the Water Well 4 Conduit Schedule, circuits 5 and 6 identify TRANSFORMER (XMFR-01-004) as the 480:2,400 volt step-up isolation transformer between the main switchboard and the VFD breaker enclosure, while circuits 10 and 11 identify TRANSFORMER (XMFR-01-004) again as the 480:120/240 volt panel transformer between the main switchboard and panelboard LP-01-004. At Water Well 2 the corresponding devices are correctly given two tags, XMFR-01-002 and XMFR-02-002. Separately, at both wells the circuits described as CHLORINE ROOM RECEPTACLES and CHLORINE ROOM LIGHTING are scheduled to terminate at AMMONIA ROOM RECEPTACLES and AMMONIA ROOM LIGHTING; the circuit described as CHLORINE ELECTRONIC SCALE POWER is scheduled to terminate at BOOSTER PUMP No. 1 at Well 2 and BOOSTER PUMP No. 3 at Well 4; and at Well 2 the CHLORINE ROOM HVAC UNIT is fed from LOAD CENTER (LP-02-001), the ammonia room load center, rather than from LP-02-002.
REQUEST: Please issue a corrected Conduit Schedule for both wells by Addendum, assigning a distinct tag to the Water Well 4 panel transformer and correcting the destinations of the chlorine room receptacle, lighting, electronic scale and HVAC circuits.
- Created At
- Sep 22, 2026
- Project Id
- 6aa9b943c7751fcbc9922ec4
City of HeathIssuing agency·Heath, TX·via CivCast, the bid board Texas civil engineers advertise on