The Board of Education approved on Tuesday, October 7, the fourth phase of the Sandy Hook School building construction project to be forwarded to the state.

Previously, at its September 16 meeting, the school board heard a presentation from Diversified Project Management’s Geralyn Hoerauf, Consigli Construction’s Aaron Krueger, and Svigals + Partners’ Julie McFadden, who each reported on the progress of the Sandy Hook School building project. Phase 4 of the project will focus on building construction.

The school board’s unanimous approval will now allow the Phase 4 documents to be submitted to the State of Connecticut’s Office of School Facilities for review and approval.

The construction documents submitted for the board’s approval, Ms Hoerauf said at this week’s meeting, are “substantially complete.”

“We’re going to call them 95 percent complete,” said Ms Hoerauf. “It encompasses everything that you saw on September 16 and we also provided you with a two-page list of the major advancements made in the documents from the June 30 version that you saw at the end of the design development to these final construction documents.”

The school board also unanimously approved cost estimates based on the construction documents to be reviewed for approval by the state. The state’s approval will allow Phase 4 to be put out to bid, according to Ms Hoerauf. The cost estimate included in the package, however, Ms Hoerauf explained, includes part of Phase 3, which has already been put out to bid and is set to have site work started shortly.

“This cost estimate includes both of those, to give you a comprehensive cost estimate of the entire project at this point,” said Ms Hoerauf.

Board of Education Chair Keith Alexander said the cost estimates does not include work that was already completed and does not include some work left to be done.

School board member David Freedman shared the cost estimate for the combined construction cost estimates is $39,494,442 of the $50 million project.

While board Secretary Kathy Hamilton expressed concern over not knowing the full cost estimates from the documents, Ms Hoerauf said full estimates will be better known once Phase 4 is put out to bid.