Several Decatur County companies won bids Tuesday to complete some work at the county’s new agriculture building, currently under construction off Vada Road, near the Decatur County Fairgrounds.

At the regular meeting of the Decatur County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday morning, commissioners unanimously approved the low bids for several facets of the building project. Those bid awards were for foundation construction, general contractor services, and structural paneling.

McMillan Construction, Inc., of Bainbridge, won the bid to install the concrete foundation for the building, at a bid of $38,782. Four other bids were received, and the next lowest was from Davis and Lamb Construction of Donalsonville, at $47,955.

SIPS Team U.S.A., of Bainbridge, won the bid for the structural paneling of the building, at a price of $96,600. Only one other company, General Panel Corporation of Johnson City, Tenn., placed a bid. General Panel’s bid of $96,924.27 was just $324.27 more than the SIPS bid.

Billy Dollar Construction of Bainbridge won the bid to provide general contractor services for the project, with an hourly rate of $40-per-hour. County Administrator Tom Patton said that the county’s building department inspector, Craig Smith, could do the site supervision services and save the county money.

“[Smith] is well-qualified to do that,” Patton said. “We are asking that we use a general contractor, who has a contractor’s license, to help us oversee that on an hourly rate.”

Two other bids were received for the general contractor services — McMillan Construction of Bainbridge at $50-per-hour and PDC Construction of Bainbridge at $65-per-hour.

When commissioners questioned Patton as to how many hours the general contractor would need to work, Patton said it would be “whatever we need.”

“We have a conference call with the [federal] grant people every week, just as an update to them,” he said. “We will have an on-site progress meeting every week, prior to when we talk to the feds. We’ll have a construction person there to make sure everything we’ve done in the week prior is up to snuff, and then make sure we’re ready to go for the next week of work.”

The building will house the Decatur County Cooperative Extension Office, the county’s 4-H program, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s local Farm Service Agency (FSA) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) offices. The U.S. government will pay an annual $44,832.90 lease to maintain offices for the FSA and the NRCS.

The facility is projected to be open to the public by Feb. 28, 2012, and is expected to cost between $500,000 and $700,000.

In other financial business, the county:

• Approved a bid of $198,848.50 by Oxford Construction Co. of Albany, Ga., to complete improvements at the Decatur County Industrial Air Park. Those improvements include: remarking seeral runways and taxiways, cleaning and sealing joints in apshalt and the concrete apron, and repairing the concrete apron.

Three other bids were received and the next lowest was from Summers Concrete Construction of Hahira, Ga., at a bid of $217,480.96.