Kanawha County Board of Education President Jim Crawford listens Monday to plans for closing Bridge Elementary School. Photo by: F. Brian Ferguson, Gazette-Mail
By: Ryan Quinn, Staff Writer | Posted: April 9, 2018 | Source: WV Gazette-Mail
The Kanawha County Board of Education voted unanimously Monday to cancel the contract with the construction management company the West Virginia School Building Authority had assigned to the planned new Herbert Hoover High and consolidated Bridge/Clendenin elementary.
The move, which took place in a five-minute meeting, adds Kanawha to the list of public school systems that have dumped or have moved to dump their construction managers following backlash from schools superintendents and leaders in the school design/construction industry to the SBA’s assigning of these firms.
The SBA has publicly abandoned forcing or urging counties to use the companies. Scott Raines, the SBA’s director of school planning and construction, said in October 2017, under grilling from then-new SBA board Chairman Brian Abraham, that SBA written policy wasn’t followed in the advertisement process for construction management firms.
After that advertisement process, the SBA had assigned two companies, PCS, based in Ohio and West Virginia, and MBP, which is based in Virginia but has offices in multiple states, to public school building projects around West Virginia.
Charles Wilson, the Kanawha school system’s executive director of facilities planning, estimated the cancellation to save roughly $2 million, though he noted that figure is a “moving target.”
Raines has argued in the past that the construction managers ultimately saved money. PCS declined comment Monday.
Wilson said the county will still have to pay PCS roughly half a million dollars for services it has already provided.
“We had a lot of meetings with them and FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] and the SBA, trying to get things set up,” Wilson said when asked what the roughly $500,000 went to. “They did our preliminary estimates and costs of construction and they also provided preliminary schedules for the duration of those projects.”
If the contract would have continued, Wilson said PCS’ work would’ve included “monitoring the schedules, monitoring the budgets, constructability reviews, dealing with various prime contractors on the job as kind of a go between between us and the contractors.”
He said “clerk of the works” would be hired to oversee construction for each project.
“The architects will provide additional services under their contracts to cover the areas that the construction manager — where we need construction management,” Wilson said.
“After meeting with the architectural firms for each project, we went through the various options and I started looking at some costs, and it became evident that we could find a better project delivery method that would expedite the project and save money,” Wilson said.
PCS got a $1.2 million contract, with the possibility of more money in the future, for work on schools to replace Herbert Hoover High and Clendenin Elementary, which closed after being damaged in the June 2016 flood. FEMA is planned to provide most of the funding for the projects.
Also Monday:
- No one showed up to speak at the board’s closure hearing for Bridge Elementary, which didn’t close after the flood but is planned to be consolidated with Clendenin Elementary to create the new school. The board must still vote on whether to approve the closure.
- The board accepted the retirement of Carver Career Center Principal L. Phillip Calvert II, effective June 30, and the retirement of Title I Director Pam Padon, effective Aug. 31. The board also approved transferring Brian Barth from his Hoover art position to an assistant principal position at Nitro High, effective today.
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.
