Saugus committee tweaks Belmonte details

SAUGUS – The Belmonte Middle School Renovation Committee voted to amend the budget for the $18 million project and voted to approve the construction delivery method at its meeting on Monday night.At its previous meeting, the committee voted on a series of cuts, or “alternates” to the project that shaved $2.2 million off the final price tag before being submitted to the Massachusetts School Building Authority. But the MSBA wanted to see the $1.1 million roof replacement restored to the project.”From the meeting we had with the MSBA last week, we knew that we had to get the roof number back in the project budget,” said Dan Tavares, Senior Project Manger for Skanska USA Building Inc. “That meant we had to do something different with the alternates.”The committee voted to add the replacement of vinyl asbestos tiles, new lockers and new data infrastructure as alternates for a total $530,000 while eliminating $630,000 for energy recovery controls. The alternates to the project will only be completed if there is money left over in the budget or if the MSBA decides they’re eligible for reimbursement.The committee also voted to use a construction management at-risk (CM at-risk) method to run the project as opposed to the tradition “design, bid, build” method. The CM at-risk method uses a construction manager that oversees the entire project similar to a general contractor, but acts as a consultant for the project owner and is hired early in the design process.The contract with a construction manager is based on guaranteed maximum price. If the project comes in under budget, that money would go back to the town, as opposed to going to the general contractor as profit in the traditional “low bid” method.Project Manager Jim Dowd said this prevents shortcuts and lower quality construction.”You select the construction manager completely based on qualifications,” said Dowd. “If you go lump sum, it has nothing to do with qualifications, you’re going to get the guy with the lowest number whether he has a good reputation or a bad reputation.”The Belmonte Building Committee will be giving public presentations at various school open houses in the coming weeks, including today at the Waybright School, Sept. 20 at the Oaklandvale School, Sept. 28 at the Veterans School and Oct. 6 at the Ballard School.Matt Tempesta can be reached at [email protected]. You can follow him on Twitter at @MattTempesta.