Brookfield has saved nearly $1 million on the cost of the work to replace some of its leaded water service lines between last summer and this spring.
Village trustees on Monday, June 22, approved three change orders representing decreases in the amount Brookfield had agreed to pay to Five Star Energy Services for its work for the village’s lead water line replacement project last year compared to the final amount the village owed for the work that was done.
Across the three contracts — Brookfield separates each year’s replacement project into three parts for ease of accounting and bidding — with Five Star, the village saved $973,881.30 compared to the total amount it had agreed to pay when it issued the contracts last year.
The first contract, initially worth $2,982,899, was decreased by $303,485 for a final price to Brookfield of $2,679,413. The second contract was initially worth $2,623,574 and decreased by $447,067 to $2,176,507. And the third contract, initially worth $1,696,459, went down by $223,329 for a total of $1,473,129.
“These are what’s known as balancing change orders. They come at the end of the project, and they basically reflect whether we had increases or decreases on all of the contract pay items,” Derek Treichel, Brookfield’s village engineer, told trustees on June 22. “When we go out to bid, if we plan on having 150 lead service replacements, it’s much easier for us to reduce that number than to add a few if we find them out in the field. We go in with a conservative number.”
Treichel said all of the planned replacement work was completed, and the reductions represent the excess “cushion” that the village had built into its contracts originally in case there was more work to be done than predicted.
Altogether, the village spent about $6.33 million for its lead water service line replacements last year, which began in July 2025 before reaching substantial completion in the fall and full completion this spring. It’s a substantial drop from the $7.30 million total the village agreed to last year.
While that sum may seem high, even with the unexpected savings the village is realizing, Brookfield and Hancock Engineering, the village’s engineering firm, have historically been successful in applying for grant funding from the state through various avenues to cover the majority of the costs associated with projects like replacing leaded water service lines or aging water mains.
For the village’s lead line replacements this year, Hancock last November requested about $25 million in bypass funding from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and $12 million more for water main improvements.
In 2024 and 2025, Brookfield was able to obtain bypass funding — that is, grant money that was set aside for one municipality’s project that was then delayed to the next fiscal year, leaving the funding earmarked for disbursement — for its water main improvement projects.
