Greylock School Bidding Expected for October
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Greylock School project is expected to go out to bid sometime in October with bids anticipated by the end of the year.
Tim Alix of Collier's International, the owner's project manager, said the project team is awaiting comments on the 90 percent design package submitted to the Massachusetts School Building Authority.
Once received, the team will respond and then incorporate the comments into the completed documents.
"And at that point, we'd be ready to go out to bid," he said. "We still have our prequalification process ongoing, and that's to develop our list of contractors, and so we're kind of halfway through that."
The prequalification review should be completed by the middle of September and the contractors will be notified that they've been prequalified. Bidding documents should be "on the street" in the middle of October.
Alix said some of the prequalification bids had been reissued to try to bump up the number of respondents but no additional responses had come in. There are about four or six in each category, except for the elevator.
"I did go back and look at the Conte school [project] to see what kind of response we got back at that time, and it was similar, it was a similar response, so that made me feel like it wasn't something new or something unusual," he said, adding it was more likely the North Adams location that reduced the interest.
Two package bids will go out, the first for the 10 or 11 subtrades and then about two weeks later for the general contractors, who "uses those bids to assemble, his team, as well as supplementing with trades that aren't filed subcontractors to generate his full price," said Alix.
The general contractor will fold the elevator into their cost.
Jesse Saylor of TSKP Studio said the geothermal drilling approved by the committee last month will begin on Thursday and it will take a couple weeks to get the results. The well for the school is also being reviewed by the Conservation Commission.
"They asked for some additional information, which we were able to provide last week, and so we're hoping that they're about ready to wrap up their review and allow that part of the process to move forward," he said. "After the Conservation Commission completes their review of the project and issues, and order of conditions, we'll move ahead to the Planning Board. ...
"I am a little bit wondering if this process will wrap up in time for stated bid date, and so we're watching this and trying to move this forward as much as possible, because it seems like it's getting close."
He noted that the timing from the 90 percent design, incorporating MSBA's comments and completing the 100 percent design "is a relatively small period where we're working on developing drawings and specifications. We're still crossing T's and dotting I's in our documentation."
One final point is the design for the turtle pond, a feature that the school community made a priority for the new building.
"It is something we we don't design every day, and so a kind of a unique feature, we want to make sure we meet your expectations," he said.
The committee approved a bid submitted of $5,340 from Engineering Design Associates Inc. to do an independent structural review of the project as required by the state Board of Building Regulations and Standards, and an invoice of $595 for Project Dog, a procurement and bidding software platform.
It also authorized Macksey, as mayor and chair of the School Building Committee, or her designee the superintendent of schools, to approve unexpected expenditures up to $50,000 on the project.
"There's things that we find in the field. For example, we open something and the pipe isn't where it's supposed to be, and we have to move it, rather than shutting down the job for 48 hours until we post the meeting, Tim [Callahan] or I can sign off on that," she said. "This is just us having the ability to make a decision in the field and keep moving."
She said the committee would be updated on any expenditures at the next meeting; Alix said if it was a larger problem beyond $50,000, it would likely need engineering and would wait for committee approval.
In other business, the mayor addressed the Open Meeting Law complaint filed against the committee for failing to distinguish between physical and virtual attendance at a January meeting and not going into enough details in the minutes.
"We modified our minutes to reflect who was online and who was in person. We made that change, we submitted it to the [attorney general's office] ... And then a second inquiry, I believe, was made about how our meeting minutes weren't robust enough to reflect the discussion that was recorded," she said.
"You probably read about it all over Facebook because it was plastered all over Facebook that it was an Open Meeting violation. And yes, it was, but only to the extent that they're asking us to really beef up our minutes a little bit, and that's what is before you tonight."
The mayor said the minutes are more detailed on the discussion of the budget, the presentations and the schedule update.
"There's no conspiracy theory. There's nothing that we're trying to hide. We just do things in a boilerplate kind of way," she said. "So we are responding in the sense that we are going to revote these minutes for the second time, and hopefully they adequately address any issues that the wondering public has with that."
The amended minutes were approved by the committee.
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