At Tuesday’s Marblehead Board of Health meeting, Health Director Andrew Petty announced that the Transfer Station project will be going out for bidding on Jan. 17, pending a DEP permit.

Petty said that bids will be due on Feb. 21. Contractors will have an opportunity to visit the site and ask questions. The total budget for the construction is $1.258 million, which Petty said needs to be used to ensure the project’s most important parts are completed first.

“When we put this out to bid, we need to make sure we group certain things together and that we have a lot of alternates for this,” he said. “We have to do the stuff upfront; that’s going to be the big spend. Alternates, in descending order, these are the things we get done if you had the additional money.”

The “base bid” for the project consists of pit renovation, which consists of the compactor, a scale pit, driving lanes, and the scale house foundation. Last month, a temporary trailer was completed so that employees could work through the winter. Petty said that the temporary trailer will not affect the construction of the permanent scale house.

“Where we placed the temporary trailer is out of the way for the foundation for the scale house,” Petty said. “So, all of that work can continue.”

Petty then explained that there are five alternate construction pieces to the project. In order of importance, the alternates include the new scale house, a transaction hut pad, a swap shed pad, the transaction hut construction, and the swap shed construction.

During the construction process, the biggest interruption will be to commercial operations, according to Petty.

“The idea is that we will continue to operate, and we will need to work with the contractor to continue to operate,” Petty said. “But there are going to be some interruptions.”

When the scale pit is installed in front of the compactor, services will shut down.

“Our main focus during construction really is for residents,” Petty added.

The remaining hurdle in the bidding process is the pending DEP permit, which was scheduled to be signed before New Year but is still awaiting signature. After bidding is completed, Petty said discussions can be had with the board regarding moving forward with the rest of the project after the base bid.