The Perry Hill School Building Committee has had to do some creative rearranging over the past couple months in order to keep the price tag for the new school at the $41.5 million voters approved in 2006.
Since that time, several unforeseen costs have cropped up.
Bricks that were supposed to be cleaned and reused had to be replaced instead.
Tunnels below the school developed a mold problem.
An underground storage tank sprung a leak and needed to be cleaned up.
But Sean Sullivan, the chairman of the building committee, said the project remains on budget and on schedule.
The 56-year-old building is slated to open as the city’s 5th and 6th grade school in September.
Sullivan said the project is more than 60 percent completed.
Background
The 160,000 square-foot Perry Hill School was built in 1953 to house the city’s high school.
Since then, the building has been home to the Intermediate School, probate judges quarters and some other offices.
When a new intermediate school was completed in 2001, the Board of Education turned the building over to the city.
In 2006, voters approved spending $41.5 million to renovate the building “like new” and use it to help overcrowding at the elementary schools.
The state is expected to reimburse the city 42.5 percent of the budgeted costs.
On Budget? Really?
The most recent add-on cost is $130,125 the Board of Alderman approved spending Thursday.
The cost comes from extra rock that needs to be crushed on site. While the city had budgeted to have 3,000 cubic yards of rock crushed, KBE Building Corporation said the amount that needs to be excavated is actually 14,000.
Building committee members negotiated with KBE officials to get the price down from about $330,000 to the $130,125, committee member Don Sheehy told the Board of Alderman Thursday.
Other unexpected costs included:
- $60,000 to replace bricks that were originally supposed to be cleaned and reused.
- $25,000 for additional asbestos monitoring and clean-up
- $9,470 for additional mold monitoring in the underground tunnels.
- $100,000 to pump out hazardous materials from the 10,000 gallon tank that leaked oil in the courtyard.
“Value Engineering”
Sullivan said a lot of those costs have been paid for out of the project’s contingency fund. But as the costs mount up, and construction continues, the committee sweats over details that could save the city money.
“The term we use is “value engineering,” Sullivan said of the cost cutting without losing the feel of the original design.
“We are always looking at different ways to do things more cost effectively,” Sullivan said. “There’s still 30 percent of the project to go. We just want to make sure we’re making the right decisions.”
The back and forth rearranging is laid out in the Perry Hill School Building Committee meeting minutes.
The minutes highlight the minute details the committee pours over. They have discussions on kitchen stove friers, specific windows, even the way data wires are held up.
One of the big cost savings came when the committee decided not to complete a ball field renovation that was part of the original plan. The committee wanted to turn one of the playing fields by 90 degrees, add fences and benches. But as costs climbed, the committee scrapped the idea, saving $60,000.
Other decisions pending include whether windows in the cafetorium (half cafeteria, half auditorium) should be replaced now that additional asbestos was found behind them.
They committee also talked about whether to install a fire suppression system meant solely for friers on the kitchen stoves. The stoves in the school won’t have the friers installed.
