NHS Expansion Plan Ready For State Approval

By Martha Coville

At a joint meeting, the Newtown Board of Education and the Public Building and Site Committee both voted unanimously to authorize Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson to present the proposed high school expansion to officials in Hartford. On Tuesday, March 4, Dr Robinson and a representative of architectural firm Fletcher Thompson, which designed the high school addition, will meet with the Bureau of School Facilities (BSF) for a code review.

Newtown cannot solicit bidding for the high school project without approval from the BSF.

At the February 26 joint meeting, Joe Kosta, Fletcher Thompson’s project director for the high school expansion, said that the BSF will make sure that the proposed addition meets the Connecticut Building Code, and that it is completely handicap accessible. BSF also wants to know that the Newtown Board of Education has exercised due diligence in determining an accurate price for the renovation. “That’s really their only function,” he said.

Newtown Public Building and Site Committee Chairman Will Furrier said, from a design standpoint, the BSF is primarily concerned with the “scope of the project.” BSG members want to make sure the plans for the school will meet fire codes and OSHA standards, he said.

Mr Furrier said, “We’ve found that the things we’re locked into after a BSF review are things like the size of a hallway, things we’ve been looking at all along.”

Unlike the BSF, Mr Furrier said, the town building and site committee spends a lot of time reviewing the mechanics and engineering of a particular project. The BSF, he said, is more flexible on this subject, and will allow for changes after the review.

“If we say we want to change the BTUs in an air conditioning unit, for example,” he said, “they would say, ‘Yeah, you could change this if you want.’”

The Review Process

Mr Kosta said he and Dr Robinson expect to spend eight or ten hours meeting with the BSF reviewer in Hartford on March 4.

The BSF will then spend several weeks looking at the plans in greater detail. Mr Costa said, “Close to 1,000 items will be spot checked, everything from the direction in which a door swings, the amount of space under a sink, or how much of the mechanical system shuts itself down during a fire. There will be citations; we’re not perfect, but the idea is to keep them to a minimum.”

“The state will issue comments on items missing from the code, such as if a required sprinkler head is missing,” Mr Costa said. “Within about two weeks after we get the citations, we will show the new, revised documents to the state, for one last review.” And, he said, “we should be able to get the signatures from the BSF that day.”

A Tight Schedule

The Board of Education and the Newtown school district need to have the high school designs approved quickly because the renovation is running on a very tight schedule. Ronald Bienkowski, business director for the school district, hopes that Newtown voters will approve the expansion plans in early June. The school district must apply for reimbursement from the state of Connecticut before the end of that month.

Mr Kosta said that the BSF reviewer will give the district an anticipated date for approval on March 4. If the reviewer expects that the process will take longer than a month, he said that “the town has option to hire a private consultant to conduct the review. To address that potentiality, we’ve solicited consultants JoPierz Associates for about $15,000.”

Both the Board of Education and the Public Building and Site Committee unanimously voted to “give permission to the superintendent to use the services of an independent reviewer,” if the BSF anticipates that the review period will take longer than 30 days.

A Required Building Committee

Mr Bienkowski said that the high school expansion is now the Newtown Public Building and Site Committee’s project. State law, he said, requires that a building committee, independent of the Board of Education, oversee school building projects. Changes to the designs will go through the building and site committee, and must then be signed by Dr Robinson.

Finally, Ed Barrett, the director of preconstruction from the Morganti group, hired to manage the construction project, said the project is currently running about $200,000 over budget. Mr Kosta said that he will continue to look at “cost-effective engineering,” options to bring the cost down. Mr Barrett added that “this is a very favorable bidding climate.” He hopes that the bids will come in lower than expected, to make up for the higher cost.