By Glenn Rolfe

GEORGETOWN — A Wilmington company has been awarded the task of building the Sussex County Public Safety Building — a milestone project that will put the county’s Emergency Medical Services department and Emergency Operations Center under one roof.

Bancroft Construction’s low bid of $8,282,169 was unanimously approved by Sussex County Council following an update by County Engineer Hans Medlarz at council’s Tuesday meeting. It was one of eight bids considered.

“I feel it is a fair price. It is a good price,” said Mr. Medlarz. “I am very comfortable with the company. I have worked with Bancroft before. I spoke with them. We spoke about the scope. This a highly important project to us.”

With construction awarded, officials anticipate a groundbreaking this fall and an 18-month building timeline.

The total budget for the initiative is $12 million. That includes a maximum of $681,000 in fees to George, Miles & Buhr for the architecture and design work, along with the costs for extensive sitework, information technology, furniture, a new cooling tower and other amenities.

Also Tuesday, County Council approved requested amendments to the contract with George, Miles & Buhr.

“We are well within budget. I would actually say we are comfortably under budget,” Mr. Medlarz said. “But there are moving parts, and the moving parts are associated with some (of) the cooperative purchasing agreements. And that has to do with defined scope and the difficulty to pin down these scopes exactly to the point. I can assure you the budget will hold where it is today. There will be minor adjustments as we move along.”

The multipronged project includes renovation of the existing EOC complex on Rudder Lane at the county-owned Delaware Coastal Airport, along with attaching a new 20,000-square-foot EMS base.

Several sections of the EOC building — the kitchen, lobby, offices and public-access hallway — will be updated.

In plans unveiled earlier this year, EMS will move its logistics warehouse from the aging West Administrative Complex off Dupont Boulevard to the new Public Safety Building.

Training was paramount in the design for the new EMS department, which is nationally and internationally acclaimed.

Plans include a classroom with seating for 52, four simulation rooms, three smaller rooms for breakout sessions and a large area to hold the “Simbulance,” an apparatus that provides a more realistic simulated ambulance experience.

Mr. Medlarz also addressed council on some architectural budgetary concerns.

“They were comparing it with a variety of state projects, which obviously are hampered, we all know, with state requirements,” he said. “We’ll have a county, not a state, project. The unit price per square foot based on state projects would have been expectantly higher. I felt comfortable that we could get the project at the $400-per-square-foot price. We came in slightly below that.”

A full-time engineer will be assigned to the construction, “due to the complexity and the difficulty,” said Mr. Medlarz, adding that “I will be, for better or worse, the project manager.”