The Worcester County Commissioners recently awarded a contract to perform preventative maintenance on county-owned generators.
The Worcester County Government Center in Snow Hill is pictured.
File photo
Bethany Hooper, Associate Editor
Officials recently awarded a contract to perform preventative maintenance on county-owned generators.
At a meeting earlier this month, Procurement Officer Nicholas Rice presented the Worcester County Commissioners with a recommendation to award Fidelity Power Systems a contract to perform yearly preventive maintenance on county generators. Of the proposals received, Rice said Fidelity offered the best value, at $36,450 a year.
“We received five proposals from different companies,” he said. “They were evaluated by three county employees … All three of the evaluators had Fidelity Power Systems as the highest ranked and they were also the lowest cost.”
When asked how many generators the contract would cover, Rice said it was roughly 80. Commissioner Caryn Abbott, however, questioned the work Fidelity had performed as the county’s current contract holder.
“Wasn’t one of the problems with the current company was that they weren’t doing the inspections the way they were supposed to be done throughout the county?” she asked.
Rice, alluding to a generator the county had to replace at the jail earlier this year, said the company had conducted the necessary inspections.
“That generator, there were some repairs that were recommended by the company, to the jail, that were not done,” he replied. “And we think that that was what ultimately ended up causing the repair or replacement … They did the maintenance and suggested some repairs that weren’t done, I believe, in a timely manner.”
Commissioner Eric Fiori added that those issues had been corrected.
“I believe we’ve kind of caught that, kind of nipped that in the rear there … to make sure that these generator service recommendations are going directly to public works and not the individual department heads,” he said.
Fiori said he supported the recommendation but wanted to add certain services as part of the county’s generator maintenance program.
“What appears to be our failures occurring in our generators are either fuel related or coolant related, not being cycled,” he said. “So I put on the request to also looking at a fuel scrubbing company, an additional contract to this, and adding the replacement of antifreeze in our generators as part of the service agreement that we’re talking about here.”
When asked if adding antifreeze replacement to the contract would change the cost, Rice said he wasn’t sure.
“I can’t answer that right now,” he said.
With no further discussion, the commissioners voted unanimously to approve the contract with the addition of antifreeze service and to have the county explore a secondary contract for fuel scrubbing.
“So the fuel cleaning will be a separate contract, but we can definitely add the antifreeze to this, as part of this contract,” Rice said.