A second round of bidding last month helped bring construction costs for the
New Hartford Central School District’s Triple A Capital Project back in line
with original estimates, Superintendent Daniel Gilligan said
Wednesday.
Initial bids opened by the district June 18 put the
construction costs at more than $23 million, after the district originally
budgeted for closer to $20 million. Those initial bids were especially
troublesome, Gilligan said, because the district had left some wiggle room in
its budget to begin with.
| COSTS |
Construction bids for the New Hartford Central School District’s $25.7
million capital project were awarded Wednesday. The top three construction costs
were:
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In order to get the project back under budget, the board decided to make several changes to the original designs and then rebid the work. The major changes were:
- Eliminating a new entranceway planned for the Bradley Elementary School.
- Using paneling instead of bricks on the exterior of the auditorium fly space.
- Eliminating a second-floor hallway between the high school and the new math, science and technology wing.
Officials said those elements were chosen because of their primarily
aesthetic nature.
Gilligan described the planned entranceway, for
example, as “a very nice thing to have but not critical to the
project.”
The district’s goal, he added, was to preserve the nature of
the athletic field, auditorium and math, science and technology wing as they
were promised to voters prior to the bond vote in December 2006.
Bids for
the amended project were opened July 23 and awarded at a special school board
meeting Wednesday. In addition to the money saved by the above changes, Gilligan
said, other costs also came in lower the second time around.
Six
companies were chosen to do the work, which was broken down into a total of
eight categories for the bidding process. The largest category, general
construction, was awarded to Bette & Cring Construction Group for just under
$10 million. Other contracts went to H.J. Brandeles Corp., Ridley Electric
Company, Pulver Roofing Company, BMI Supply and Syracuse Stage & Lighting,
the board said.
The total cost of the bids was about $18.5 million. When
added to an additional $1.7 million in preliminary site work awarded previously,
that leaves the district well within its original budget estimate for
construction, Assistant Superintendent for Business Affairs Robert Nole said.
The remainder of the $25.7 million capital project consists of
additional costs such as architectural and legal fees.
Gilligan said he
believes the higher-than-expected initial bids were due primarily to current
petroleum and steel prices, as well as contractors protecting themselves against
the possibility of those prices continuing to rise in the future. When initial
estimates for the capital project were done in 2006, those items were
significantly cheaper than they are now.
Original estimates also may
have been off slightly due to the preliminary nature of the plans on which they
were based. District Plant Engineer Andrew Morgan said the conceptual work done
by architects prior to the bond vote amounted to only 5 percent or 10 percent of
the total architectural work needed for the project. But Nole said that is true
for all school capital projects and he does not believe it had an
impact.
“Legally, any school district in New York state can only incur
costs for conceptual designs prior to voter approval,” Nole said. “Once the
voters approve it, that’s when the architects go through and develop all the
designs.”
Primary construction was delayed for three weeks due to the
extended bidding process but will still proceed on roughly the same schedule as
original expected, officials said. The athletic field will be completed by fall
2008, the auditorium by summer 2009, and the math, science and technology wing
by spring 2010.
Gilligan said he hopes the experience the New Hartford
district had with its project can serve as an example for other local schools,
such as Whitesboro and Utica, as they begin soliciting bids for their capital
projects
“Don’t be afraid to go right back out again, because it seems to
keep everybody sharper with their pencil,” he said.
