Response provided by Chase Stapp, Director of Public Safety:
What type of contract do we have for the construction of this station?
This contract was awarded to Seidel Construction, LLC as the top-ranked contractor through a competitive sealed proposal solicitation process.
Why was this not known prior to the initial design?
The need for this design change was identified after the project was fully bid by the contractors. The change seeks to accomplish two main objectives: to eliminate periodic building humidity issues experienced at the newly constructed station 2 and to create redundancy in the system requested by our internal facility maintenance team. These objectives will be achieved by increasing the number of units servicing the common areas of the building so that the building can be zoned into smaller areas. When one unit needs to be serviced, the others can continue to run and service the other zones without having to take the entire building down.
What I'm really asking is why we have to pay for a REdesign of a plan, assuming there was already a plan?
This change order will not impact the overall project budget as the cost can be covered by owner contingency funds already built into the project.