ARLINGTON — The Arlington City Council will decide May 18 whether to award the construction contract for the Jensen Water Improvement Project to the lowest of 10 bidders.

Faber Construction bid $450,179.22, but after it was determined to have made an incomplete submission, Carman’s Construction became the lowest bidder at $465,579.18.

The city’s construction estimate was $474,448.19, but only three of 10 bidders fell below that line. Bids were opened on May 7, after it was advertised for construction.

City engineer Eric Scott explained that the Jensen-Kona neighborhood suffered several water main breaks in 2014, since most of those mains are asbestos concrete (AC) pipe.

“Back in the day, AC pipe was the end-all and be-all, but over time, it’s grown brittle,” Scott said. “It’s caused our system to fail, and forced us to fix breaks at inconvenient times, so our goal has become to replace a little bit more of it each year.”

Scott estimated that only 8 percent of the water mains are still AC pipe, and after the Jensen project replaces 2,800 linear feet, only 5 percent will remain.

“That’s two-thirds of a mile,” said Scott, who promised additional modifications to enhance the flow of water for firefighting. “Rather than having these pipes run into dead ends, we’ll be looping them, so that a tapped fire hydrant can pull water from two directions at the same time.”

If the council approves the bid, Scott expects ground to be broken on the project three weeks later. He estimated that the project should take no longer than 30 business days. City staff has met with residents to answer questions about the project.

“We’ll be posting notices when the construction will affect when people can get in and out of their driveways,” Scott said. “We’ll leave word with door hangars a few days before, and for those who wind up requiring access on those days, we’ll have steel plates ready to lay over the trenches.”

The project is being coordinated with the Transportation Benefit District’s 2015 pavement overlay program, so that all impacted neighborhood public streets will be resurfaced after the water mains are installed.

“We’re doing the utility work and paving at the same time, so that anyone who comes in afterward will never know what happened by looking at the streets,” Scott said. “The utility end is set to be wrapped up in July, and the paving should be able to be completed within a week after that.”