The Pollard School Building Committee has all but settled on a design that carries a $325.4 million overall project cost to construct a new Grade 6-8 middle school at the rear of the current Pollard site.
Nearing the end of the project’s intense six-month Schematic Design phase, the SBC voted unanimously at its June 8 meeting to endorse the design, which needs to be submitted to the Massachusetts School Building Authority by June 25 to keep the project on schedule for a November override election.
The schematic design phase has shaved more than $10 million off a previous $336 million estimate, even while adding 11,000 square feet. The new plan is for a 265,572-square-foot school. By comparison, Needham High School is just over 300,000 square feet.
The School Committee is scheduled to vote on the plan at its June 16 meeting, but the final decision rests with the SBC. The design is effectively fully baked and scheduled for a final vote of approval at the SBC’s June 22 meeting.
This will move the project into the MSBA’s “Funding the Project” phase when the town will work with the MSBA on the project scope, budget and schedule, a process that could alter the plan and the price tag. At its Aug. 26 meeting, the MBSA board will vote on providing reimbursements that could cover 20-25% of the project costs.
Members of the project team said they derived savings through “simplified phasing design” of the two-phase project, mainly shifting much more of the work into Phase 1 and leaving only construction of the school’s sixth grade center for Phase 2. This shortened the construction schedule, and time is always money when it comes to construction.
Also, some $10.46 million worth of design elements were not included in the budget, the most impactful being $6.2 million for solar parking lot canopies and $2.57 million for a rainwater reuse system. The seven elements are now classified as “add alternates” that could return if funds become available.
The budget also identified $1,141,650 in savings from value engineering measures, such as switching from concrete unit pavers to cast-in-place concrete.
Architectural and engineering costs account for $25.5 million. Other large buckets include administration ($5.2 million), furniture, fixtures and equipment ($4.2 million) and computer equipment and technology ($2.67 million).
It’s a brick house
Matt LaRue from HMFH Architects walked the SBC through the plan and what drove design decisions ranging from traffic circulation to building material selection.
“We’re aiming to preserve as many trees as possible,” he said.
“We will have an aesthetic that matches the qualities of the site,” he said. “The trees, the topography, the kind of natural features and picking materials that will complement that.”
The building exteriors will be 85% brick, he said. “Brick is a great, cost-effective way to capture that aesthetic.”
The presentation was followed by a long discussion on the budget estimating process and how the Pollard project’s $978-per-square-foot cost compares with other school construction projects across the state.
LaRue noted that there are “five or six projects that are tightly together in that there’s a similar cost per square foot, but Needham is the lowest,” with almost all the others carrying estimates of more than $1,000 per square foot.
The committee also heard from David Billings of LiRo-Hill, an architectural, engineering and construction services firm consulting on the project. There were two cost estimates done — one by the design team and the other by BOND Building Construction — and they did not diverge widely.
“There’s still a lot of design that needs to happen moving forward,” Billings said. “But the estimators seemed to be on the same page.”
The board also focused on factors that could cause costs to increase, which are many. The Pollard site is tight, building around an occupied school is challenging, the sloped topography is problematic and there is not a great deal of staging area for construction supplies and equipment.
“It’s a very complicated site,” said Brendan O’Malley from BOND Building Construction, the project contractor. “There are a lot of utility relocations, a high water table, you’ve got the MBTA tracks in there. It’s challenging.”
SBC opts to beef up contingency budget
Public construction projects always include a contingency budget, an allocation set aside within the project budget to cover unforeseen costs, risks and changes that arise during design and construction.
The draft estimate called for a 5% contingency budget, or $13 million, which brought the total project cost to just over $320 million. SBC member Stuart Chandler feared that 5% might not be sufficient.
“We’ve always strived to make things work,” he said of the town’s past practices with establishing contingency budgets. “I just think this one, with the complexity … we would really be cutting ourselves thinner.”
O’Malley noted that BOND was confident in its estimates relative to construction costs but agreed that the site carries risks outside of bricks and mortar.
“We’re going to be asking the town for money and the last thing we want to do is go back to them again because something went wrong,” Chandler said.
“I think you’ve got to up it to 7%. We can always bring it down if we have to.”
SBC Chair Richard Creem noted that if the contingency ends up not being needed, the town is not harmed. “If you don’t use it, the debt is never issued,” he noted.
When it came time to vote, the board opted to raise the contingency to 7%, or $18,251,024, which raised the total project budget to $325.4 million.
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