ELY – The next phase of the Ely school building renovation project is under review by school board members and nearly $3.6 million in construction bids are expected to be awarded at a special meeting Monday night.
Construction managers presented the bids that were received from contractors and opened on Nov. 18 to board members last Monday, after the Timberjay’s early deadline for the Thanksgiving holiday. The school board’s facilities committee was expected to review the totals this week and recommend awarding the bids for the next phase of the $20 million school renovation project.
Following a brief summary of current work, including installing roof decking between the Washington and Memorial buildings to allow for enclosed work before the onslaught of winter, Todd Erickson, of Kraus Anderson, walked board members through the components of the latest round of construction bids that total $3,586,076.
Some of the large AC/heating units were installed on the roof last week.
“Back in the southwest corner, where the heat is on, we started trenching in some underground mechanicals,” Erickson said.
“We are seven months into a 16-month project and 38-percent complete,” he said. “We hope to make some decisions at your Dec. 6 board meeting and hope to issue contracts for Bid Package 3 on Dec. 7 to move forward.”
The latest round of bids covers much of the mechanical and heating and ventilation systems and controls, demolition and rough carpentry, steel supply and erection, drywall, painting, installing new security and fire alarms, intercoms and clocks and building access controls, fire suppression systems, and window replacement in both existing buildings.
Erickson noted that a couple of local/regional contractors who provided low bids included Lenci Enterprises, Inc. for the rough carpentry and demolition work. JRK Steel, Inc. of Duluth was the lowest of three bidders for the steel supply.
“We actually had four bidders for the windows,” he said. “Our estimate was $743,000 for that portion of the window project and the low bid (from United Glass Inc., Minneapolis) came in at $594,000, so that was $145,000 under estimate. That was nice to see.”
The Combined Mechanical bid, the largest contract in the package, had just one bidder, which was a “big surprise” to Erickson.
“The day before the bids were let we were still fielding questions from as many as four companies. We’re not sure why the other three companies (RJ Mechanical, JK Mechanical and Peterson Sheet Metal) didn’t bid on this. The good news is that for the competitiveness, as long as the other three stayed with it, we believe that we got competitive pricing,” he said.
Shannon’s Inc. of International Falls, was the lone bidder at $1,384,000.
Johnson Controls was the low bidder for building controls at $228,200.
In response to questioning from board member Darren Visser on how the latest round of bids compared to the rejected package from last spring that came in nearly $4 million over budget, Erickson said he was working on bid tabulations and reviewing the project and expected to have a clearer picture on the bid package for the facilities committee this week. “On the surface, we’re not really comparing apples to apples on that,” said Karl Larsen, of Architectural Resources Inc. “Every single work scope that we submitted for Bid Package 3 was reduced from Bid Package 2, originally, so it’s hard to determine what the differences are in those numbers.” Construction managers said they will provide an updated picture on the bid comparisons for school board members later this month.