NHS Expansion Project Pushed Back Two Weeks

By Eliza Hallabeck

The Board of Education learned this week, that the Newtown High School expansion project is already two weeks behind schedule.

Ronald Bienkowski, the district business manager, reported that a number of things had happened to set the project off its time track.

“The original schedule that the Morganti Group had provided to us, which was reviewed at the last meeting, had indicated that we would be going to bid this week,” Mr Bienkowski said. “They have been working furiously, as well as Fletcher Thompson, to address all of the issues to make sure that we have as comprehensive of a package as possible.”

Ed Barrett, director for preconstruction for the Morganti Group, said there were a number of concerns with the drawings for the project. The town also hired a third-party engineer to assess the work, and, Mr Bienkowski said, that will push the Newtown High School expansion project back.

“It will take approximately two weeks plus or minus to pull all of these pieces together,” the business manager said. “When I heard that, I was very concerned because we have been pushing this schedule as feverishly as we could so we could engage in construction activities this summer.”

Mr Barrett is still optimistic that time can be spared from different aspects of the construction process, but he said time is needed on projects of this size. He said the Morganti Group met on Tuesday morning to see if it could compress its schedule of its preconstruction project assessments.

Mr Barrett said the project will still need four weeks to review each of the bids. He said projects of this size tend to require five weeks, but with crunching some things together a few days may be gained.

David Nanavaty, a member of the Board of Education, said he was concerned with the amount of time devoted to this phase of the project.

“It seems the more we move this back, the more we are getting closer to January of 2010,” said Mr Nanavaty. He added that he likes that Mr Barrett is still being hopeful about the time frame for the project.

Joe Costa, an architect with Fletcher Thompson, said the Morganti Group is doing “an amazing job.”

“There is a lot of complexity to this project,” Mr Costa said. He noted the Morganti Group has asked about many different potential problems, and he said the number of comments the group has made has been in the thousands.

Mr Bienkowski said his office has been talking about the bidding process and procedure with the Morganti Group as well as the town financial office. The scheduling for the bid opening and location will be happening shortly, he said.

The original date the Morganti Group expected to receive the reviews from Fletcher Thompson, the architectural firm with the Newtown High School expansion project, was May 19.

“We had approximately a two-week period in there for Morganti to do their final reviews,” said Mr Barrett. “Once we receive the documents, we need to go through the scopes of work, we need to go through the specifications, and make sure everything is coordinated and ties out together. It’s a pretty elaborate process.”

There are ten bid packages ranging from electrical to demolition, and, according to Mr Barrett, the Morganti Group goes through each drawing to make sure all of the necessary details are there.

On May 21, the Morganti Group found substantial issues with the electrical and plumbing documents, and, according to Mr Barrett, it sent a letter to the building committee and the town stating that the drawings were not ready to go out to bid.

“We had set up meetings with Fletcher Thompson and our project management and managers to go into detail with some of the issues we had come across,” said Mr Barrett.

He also said the Morganti Group met with the building committee to make sure it knew where the process stood on May 27.

“The reason we do this during preconstruction is to make sure as best we can when the documents go out to bid we have a good tight set of documents, that there’s not things hanging out as questionable that some contractors could come back and ask for money, delays or things of that nature,” Mr Barrett said.

Fletcher Thompson agreed to have the work done by last Wednesday and the Morganti Group, according to Mr Barrett, went over the documents by Thursday. There were further questions, and the papers are being looked at again.

Mr Barrett said there were electrical, mechanical items, circulating issues, and other things.

“If we just put this out to bid someone would come back and say, ‘I can’t put that into this closet,’ and instead of doing that later why not do it now.”

Lillian Bittman, secretary for the Board of Education, said she was impressed by the amount of work that was being done, but was still disappointed with the timing.

“I also want to commend you both because the worst thing that could happen to us as a district is having something brought back and having the project delayed again,” said Ms Bittman.