January 2024 Special Meeting Minutes

Open­ing:

The Spe­cial Board Meet­ing of the Pana­ma City-Bay Coun­ty Air­port and Indus­tri­al Dis­trict was called to order at 9:00 a.m., Jan­u­ary 11, 2024 by Chair Hol­ly Melzer. 

The Invo­ca­tion was giv­en by Vice Chair Sheldon.

The Pledge of Alle­giance was led by Mr. Will Cramer.

Roll was called. In atten­dance were: Ms. Vic­to­ria Williams, Mr. Matt Algar­in, Mr. Will Cramer, Mr. Les McFat­ter, Mr. Glen McDon­ald, Vice Chair Shel­don and Chair Hol­ly Melzer.

Chair Melz­er asked if there were any Pub­lic Com­ments. There were no Pub­lic Comments. 

Chair Melz­er asked if there were any items on the Agen­da, includ­ing the that any Board Mem­ber would like to move or dis­cuss fur­ther, and if not, to make a motion to accept the Agenda.

Ms. Vic­to­ria Williams made a motion to Accept the Agen­da, and Mr. Glen McDon­ald sec­ond­ed the motion. The vote was tak­en and the motion passed unanimously.

Dis­cus­sion:

Mr. Park­er McClel­lan brought to the Board’s atten­tion that ZHA, the cur­rent Gen­er­al Con­sult­ing Com­pa­ny, ten­dered a let­ter yes­ter­day indi­cat­ing that they do not want to renew their cur­rent con­tract in May of 2024. Mr. Cole Davis explained the impact of the let­ter on the selec­tion of the con­sul­tants to be con­sid­ered lat­er in the Meeting.

Air­port staff and Legal Coun­sel will do a thor­ough review of the Task Orders assigned to ZHA, and a mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the ZHA con­tract will be pre­pared and pre­sent­ed to the Board for approval.

Mr. Davis asked the Board for autho­riza­tion to enter into the con­tract mod­i­fi­ca­tion dis­cus­sions with ZHA. 

Mr. McDon­ald made a motion to give Legal Coun­sel autho­riza­tion to enter into the con­tract mod­i­fi­ca­tion and descope dis­cus­sions with ZHA to mod­i­fy their con­tract and Mr. Cramer sec­ond­ed the motion. The vote was tak­en and the motion passed unan­i­mous­ly. After dis­cus­sion, Mr. McDon­ald with­drew his motion.

Mr. Davis said that a pro­posed revised task order list will be pre­sent­ed at the Board Meet­ing on Jan­u­ary 24, 2024. Once approved, the list will be used to nego­ti­ate addi­tion­al task orders for the two firms that will take over after ZHA leaves. The two firm con­tracts with the addi­tion­al task orders can then be approved at the same meet­ing. If the Board would like to do it soon­er, they can call a Spe­cial Board Meeting.

Mr. Cramer made a motion to give Legal Coun­sel autho­riza­tion to enter into the con­tract mod­i­fi­ca­tions and descope dis­cus­sions with ZHA to mod­i­fy their con­tract. Once approved, the list will be used to nego­ti­ate addi­tion­al task orders for the two firms that will take over after ZHA leaves, and Mr. Mc Don­ald sec­ond­ed the motion. The vote was tak­en and the motion passed unanimously.

Busi­ness Items:

Ms. Williams served as the Selec­tion Com­mit­tee Chair, so she explained the rank­ing process. She felt that the rank­ings are very good and that the Com­mit­tee was very impressed with the firms. She brought up the pos­si­bil­i­ty of choos­ing more than one firm, espe­cial­ly since ZHA would no longer be work­ing with the Air­port. In the event that the two suc­cess­ful firms cho­sen are not a good fit, or if one of the firms does not per­form, she sug­gest­ed the con­sid­er­a­tion of hir­ing three of the firms. She explained that it is cus­tom­ary with city and coun­ty munic­i­pal­i­ties, school boards and the like to have mul­ti­ple firms con­tract­ed for their use. 

There was Board dis­cus­sion regard­ing how many Gen­er­al Con­sult­ing Ser­vice firms would be ben­e­fi­cial to the Air­port. Legal Coun­sel and Air­port Staff answered ques­tions as part of this dis­cus­sion. Fol­low­ing, lengthy dis­cus­sions it was deter­mined that the selec­tion of two firms would be appro­pri­ate, as two firms was the orig­i­nal intent. 

a. Accept of Gen­er­al Con­sult­ing Ser­vices Selec­tion Committee’s Rank­ing and Autho­riza­tion to Nego­ti­ate Contract

This item pro­vides for Board approval of the Selec­tion Committee’s rank­ing of firms and autho­riza­tion to nego­ti­ate a con­tract to per­form ser­vices as out­lined in the Agree­ment for Pro­fes­sion­al Engi­neer­ing, Archi­tec­tur­al, Project Inspec­tion, Con­struc­tion Man­age­ment and Plan­ning Ser­vices. The term is for a peri­od of one year and the con­tract pro­vides for four (4) one-year renew­al options. 

A Request for State­ment of Qual­i­fi­ca­tions was issued in Octo­ber 2023 for the pur­pose of select­ing a firm to pro­vide gen­er­al con­sult­ing ser­vices. Sev­en firms, list­ed below, responded:

Ardur­ra Group, Inc.

AVCON, Inc.

Good­wyn Mills & Cawood, Inc.

Michael Bak­er International

RS&H, Inc.

Volk­ert, Inc.

Woolpert, Inc.

The respons­es were reviewed by the Selec­tion Com­mit­tee in order to rank the sub­mit­tals received and present a rec­om­men­da­tion to the Board to approve the rank­ing of the firms. The Selec­tion Com­mit­tee was com­prised of Board Mem­ber Vic­to­ria Williams as Com­mit­tee Chair and Staff mem­bers Mr. Park­er McClel­lan, Mr. Richard McConnell, Ms. Dar­lene Gor­don and Mr. Mark Adams.

The Selec­tion Com­mit­tee mem­bers were pro­vid­ed a copy of each firm’s sub­mit­tal for eval­u­a­tion. Eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria includ­ed review of indi­vid­ual team mem­bers, team over­all expe­ri­ence, pre­vi­ous air­port project expe­ri­ence, cur­rent work­load, DBE involve­ment and oth­er relat­ed items. The Com­mit­tee met on Jan­u­ary 4 for oral dis­cus­sions with the respond­ing firms and to indi­vid­u­al­ly score the pro­pos­als, with the firm rank­ing based on the total score of all com­mit­tee mem­bers. Each mem­ber was giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to express their thoughts about each sub­mit­tal at a pub­lic meet­ing after the con­clu­sion of the interviews.

Fol­low­ing review and dis­cus­sion by the Selec­tion Com­mit­tee, a motion was made and sec­ond­ed as to the rank the firms and to approve the rec­om­men­da­tion to the Air­port Board for con­sid­er­a­tion at the Jan­u­ary 11 meeting. 

The rank­ing based on total score, is shown in the fol­low­ing table: 

Rank Firm Total Score

1 — AVCON, Inc. 475.5

2 — Ardur­ra Group, Inc. 461.8

3 — Michael Bak­er Inter­na­tion­al 452.9

4 — Woolpert, Inc. 447.1

5 — RS&H, Inc. 444.9

6 — Volk­ert, Inc. 413.3

7 — Good­wyn Mills & Cawood, Inc. 398.9

Based on the rank­ing, the Com­mit­tee rec­om­mends the Board give autho­riza­tion for Staff and legal coun­sel to nego­ti­ate a con­tract for ser­vices with AVCON, Inc.

If a con­tract can­not be nego­ti­at­ed with the first ranked firm, then Staff will nego­ti­ate with the sec­ond ranked firm, and so on until a con­tract is suc­cess­ful­ly negotiated.

The bud­get impact is unknown at this time, but will be cov­ered in approved funds in the FY24 Oper­at­ing and Cap­i­tal Bud­get. Future Bud­gets will allo­cate funds each year for the cost of the services. 

The Selec­tion Com­mit­tee requests Board accept the rank­ing of respond­ing firms and the autho­riza­tion for Staff and Legal Coun­sel to nego­ti­ate an Agree­ment for Pro­fes­sion­al Engi­neer­ing, Archi­tec­tur­al, Project Inspec­tion, Con­struc­tion Man­age­ment and Plan­ning Ser­vices with the high­est ranked firm, AVCON, Inc. Should nego­ti­a­tions with the top ranked firm be unsuc­cess­ful, approval is giv­en to Staff to nego­ti­ate with firms based on rank­ing until a con­tract is suc­cess­ful­ly negotiated.

Ms. Cramer made a motion to approve the accep­tance of the Gen­er­al Con­sult­ing Ser­vices Selec­tion Committee’s Rank­ing, and Mr. McDon­ald sec­ond­ed the motion. The vote was tak­en and the motion passed unanimously.

The Board addressed the Air­port Staff to make the deci­sion of the best num­ber of firms to nego­ti­ate with. Mr. McClel­lan intro­duced Nick Har­well, the new Direc­tor of Air­port Devel­op­ment, and the Board asked ques­tions about his expe­ri­ence with han­dling mul­ti­ple firms and he had expe­ri­ence man­ag­ing two to three firms at a time. Mr. McConnell also agreed that three would be a good num­ber. Chair Melz­er asked rep­re­sen­ta­tives present with AVCON, Inc. and Ardur­ra Group, Inc. about their will­ing­ness to work togeth­er and both com­pa­nies agreed to work togeth­er and hon­or what was in the Airport’s best inter­ests. Legal Coun­sel said that if the Board decides to add the third firm lat­er, it would need to go out to bid again for the addi­tion­al firm. 

Mr. Cramer made a motion to nego­ti­ate with the top two ranked firms and to see how things go before accept­ing a third firm. and Mr. Mc Don­ald sec­ond­ed the motion. The vote was tak­en with all votes being ​“yes”, except for Ms. Williams and Vice Chair Shel­don who both vot­ed ​“no”. The motion passed.

Pub­lic Comments:

There were no Pub­lic Comments.

Adjourn­ment:

The meet­ing was adjourned at approx­i­mate­ly 9:45 a.m.

Next meet­ings scheduled:

Jan­u­ary 24, 2024 – Board Meet­ing 9:00 a.m.

_________________________________ ________________________________

Lisa Brady, Exec­u­tive Assis­tant Hol­ly Melz­er, Chair