Jail expansion brings Flintco to Springfield

by Karen E. Culp

SBJ Staff

For one 91-year-old construction company, the Greene County Justice Center expansion opened up a whole new market.

Flintco was hired to serve as the project and con-struction manager for the jail expansion, and set up a temporary office, now located in an old home on North Campbell Avenue, to handle the job. The company is now looking for a permanent home in Springfield, said Bart Boatright, senior project manager.

The jail project, which had a ground breaking Sept. 13, represents its first project in town, but the company hopes to secure additional work here.

"We've looked for additional work in the area and have bid on a few projects. We bid on the Wonders of Wildlife museum and on the SMS library expansion, so we are seeking other work in the area and hope to develop this market," Boatright said.

Flintco now has four people in Springfield working on the jail expansion project but plans to hire more as it takes on more projects in town. The company's headquarters is in Tulsa, Okla., and it has other offices in Oklahoma City, Albuquerque, N.M., and Memphis, Tenn. A subsidiary company, Oakridge, also has offices in Springdale, Ark., and Tulsa.

Flintco has pos-itioned itself as an expert on building large institutions such as universities, hospitals and jails, Boatright said. The company started as Tulsa Rig, Reel and Manufacturing in 1908, supplying oilfield equipment until 1938, when it began focusing on construction. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the company constructed some military training centers, including Fort Leonard Wood, Boatright said.

During the past five years, the company's focus on large institutions, such as jails, has emerged. In that time, Flintco has constructed the four correctional facilities most recently completed by the state of Oklahoma, the largest of those projects being the $65 million Tulsa County Jail, Boatright said. The Greene County facility will be a $15.5 million project. Construction is set to begin in the next two weeks on the expansion, which is funded by a special law enforcement tax passed by voters in 1997.

The Greene County Commission decided to call for a construction and project manager for the job rather than for a general contractor because of the project's special needs, said Presiding Commissioner David Coonrod.

"While we were in the process of touring other facilities, we noted Flintco's operations and the work they had done on other correctional facilities, and we decided we wanted their technical expertise and management experience on this job," Coonrod said.

Flintco will oversee the bidding of the individual construction jobs on the project and will work with those subcontractors. The project has a local preference option in place with regard to the subcontractors who are chosen, which means that a subcontractor from Greene County who is within 2.5 percent of the lowest bid on the job will be awarded the contract, Coonrod said.

"It was a policy decision on the part of the commission to try to encourage the use of local folks so we could keep those construction dollars local," Coonrod said.

One contract has already been awarded using the local preference rule. Pre-Stress Casting Inc. of Springfield received the pre-casting contract on the jail construction as a result of the local preference provision, Boatright said. Only one other con-struction contract has been awarded so far, to Rensch of Willard, which will complete the earth work for the jail expansion project, Boatright said.

The 470-bed jail is to be complete in 2002. The new justice center will have 262 more beds than the current center has, Coonrod said. The expanded number of beds is anticipating Greene County's need, he added, but the additional beds may be leased to other jurisdictions that do not have the needed spaces for their incarcerated individuals.

"We may be able to lease the additional bed space to other jurisdictions