Cookeville’s project to expand the city’s Energy Department located on West Davis Road is now out for bid.
Energy Department Director Carl Haney said that plans for the expansion are complete. It will add an estimated 38,000 square feet of office and warehouse space to the current headquarters. Haney said getting to the bidding phase of the process has been smooth.
“It’s going good we are just now getting started in that process,” Haney said. “As far as that we have done our RFQs (Research For Quotation) to get qualified contractors on board and then now those plans will go out to them and start the bidding process.”
Haney said the city will take bids over the next couple of weeks in hopes of acquiring a contractor for the project. Haney said the city is hoping to review bids at the April 17 city council meeting.
“As long as everything goes good with that we would have it approved at that date,” Haney said. “And then we would proceed with the other processes involved to get the construction going.”
Haney said he looks forward to having more capabilities with the expanded headquarters.
“We are working on an AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure) project right now as everybody knows,” Haney said. “We are updating all of our meters to the automated meter infrastructure so we will be able to read those meters and watch outages a whole lot better. Well in this new building, we will have an area that our folks can monitor those things and so we will be able to provide those services to our customers both looking at outages a lot better, having the personnel there, and having them with the right equipment to be more efficient and provide a better service to our customers.”
The Cookeville Energy Department houses the city’s gas and electric divisions. Haney said the expansion will improve service capabilities for both divisions.
