Amid Continuing Council Concerns —

School Bd Set To Hire Project Manager For 5/6 School

By Jeff White

After hearing endorsements from Superintendent of Schools John R. Reed and the school district’s Director of Business Ron Bienkowski at its last meeting, the Newtown Board of Education is expected to vote next week to hire a project manager for its proposed 5/6 school.

School officials decided to endorse the project management firm Strategic Building Solutions (SBS) after Newtown’s Public Building and Site Committee gave a recommendation in the firm’s favor in late February. Mr Bienkowski presented an update on the project management issue during the school board’s last workshop meeting, which was well received. Dr Reed will list the hiring of SBS on his formal recommendation list next Tuesday night.

The district’s decision to side with a project manager for its 5/6 school came on the heels of concerns from the Legislative Council regarding past capital projects like the high school and library additions. Both of these projects utilized a construction manager employed by the contracted architect, and in both these projects council members felt there were some financial glitches that they never had a chance to address.

Mr Bienkowski described the selection of a project manager as “a comprehensive approach to manage the 5/6 project. This is an attempt to approach the project differently than we have in the past.”

“A project manager essentially becomes an arm of [Newtown’s] building commission,” Mr Bienkowski explained to the school board. “[They have] nothing to do with the architect, so they are able to express our interests without bias.”

A construction manager is often contracted to provide design services or construction contracting for the project, which carries with it the potential for a conflict of interest.

If hired, SBS will, among other functions, recommend appropriate subcontractors for the 5/6 school project, pre-certify contractors, and make sure all project contracts meet qualifications. They will, essentially, look out solely for the interests of the school district and the town.

Mr Bienkowski said Wednesday afternoon that SBS has already met twice with district officials and the project’s architect – Jeter, Cook and Jepson of Hartford. The purposes of these meetings, he explained, was to work on the project’s schedule, draft a time frame for construction, and look at budgeting and engineering issues. SBS also gave their opinions on some of the architect’s drawings.

If hired, SBS has given the district a bid of $922,100 for their services, which will be paid progressively, depending on the amount of work that gets done or is expected to get done, Mr Bienkowski said. The funding for the project manager will come out of the $1.6 million that the Legislative Council appropriated late in January for the hiring of Jeter, Cook and Jepson.

The Council’s Concerns Continue

The selection of a project manager notwithstanding, the potential for the 5/6 school project, like any capital project, to run into change orders, overruns, and the use of contingency funds has Legislative Council members concerned. Because the town’s building commission and the school board contracts school construction projects, the council is left without a definitive role to play.

Addressing this concern, the district’s superintendent has suggested that a council member regularly meet with the school board and building committee as elements of the 5/6 school project are worked out with the architect.

Council Chairman Pierre Rochman rebuked that suggestion this week, saying that the council was “not interested in that kind of offer at all.” From his experience, Mr Rochman said, when an arrangement is made wherein council members sit in on another separate entity like the school board, they have no real say on the issues.

Mr Rochman said Wednesday that he intends to establish an “ad hoc committee” in the next week or ten days that will keep abreast of the financial developments of the 5/6 school project. Mr Rochman said that he hoped the committee would provide the council greater say in the financial side of the project while keeping them “very up to date [concerning] the potential financial impact [of the project].”

Mr Rochman could not comment specifically on how the committee might operate within the project’s overall framework, stating that he preferred to wait for suggestions from his fellow council members. “I don’t have any preconceived ideas of how this committee might function,” he said.

The Legislative Council has a vested interest in getting involved in the project from the outset, as it still has to fund the balance of the school board’s requested $32.1 million for the new school. When the council agreed to fund the architect fees for the project, it was on the condition that they could fund the remaining request, including construction and demolition costs, sometime this spring, when the fate of Fairfield Hills became more clear.

“We want to make sure that we get what we think we are going to get when we approve the financing,” Mr Rochman said, adding that the council also wanted to make sure that the financial side of the project would be handled well.