Dupage Policy Journal

At the Jan. 19 Glendale Heights committee of the whole meeting, village officials welcomed Leo Wright from FH Paschen. He was there to speak about Job Order Contracting, also known as indefinite agreement contracting. JOC, as it’s referred to, is a predetermined catalog of prices for smaller-size jobs that clients can use instead of normal bidding. It is still a competitive bid process and is awarded to the most qualified, but it allows a client to receive a product much faster and at a predetermined price.

“So the best part about this, no matter what project you're working with, we work in conjunction with you,” Wright, senior vice president of FH Paschen, said. “We can have discussions, we can give you budgetary numbers, we can bring in engineering firms or design firms. So it's generally a conversation. It's not like we're given a set of plans and only betting what's on the plans. We do that, we work off plans, but we will work off a a written scope of work. A walkthrough will develop the scope with you. And the best part about it is we it eliminates a lot of unnecessary change orders. So we try and give you a price for the job as a whole. We don't want to bid a job and have something not on the drawings that we know that needs to be there. So we're going to give you the price for what you need, not necessarily what you ask for, and then we'll explain it why it's needed.”

Wright told council JOC agreements also allow a city to get multiple smaller projects done under one order without going out to bid for each of them. They can also use all local contractors under the JOC agreement and not worry about planning and management as that is included. These contracts can be used for  any type of municipal work or projects, and FH Paschen has worked with many cities in Illinois on various projects, including Aurora, Elgin, and Bloomingdale Schools.

The village is considering working with FH Paschen to build its athletic fields which were already approved in the budget meeting. The village would need to hire expertise for the excavating and installation of turf, and council was told FH Paschen can handle those tasks. The board was told the agreement with FH Paschen, using local contractors, would also save the village about 5% of the costs compared to its original plans. 

The village staff has had a few preliminary meetings with FH Paschen already to ensure its competency for this type of project and get an estimate of the cost to see if it would be worth it. The council is set to discuss the athletic field projects in February and would award the contract after that discussion, although the council is interested in contacting other contractors similar to FH Paschen to ensure the best possible partner for this project.

The board also discussed Pronto’s Restaurant’s entertainment permit renewal.

The council will meet again at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday at 300 Civic Center Plaza.