Watching the cost of the project steadily climb, contractors for Newton North High School are combing through their expenses to see where they can save money.
Returning to a process that took more than six months to complete last year, Turner Construction Company has decided to undertake a last minute value engineering effort.
“When you see the numbers bump up and you say, ‘Oh my goodness’, you have to say ‘Well, we need a Plan B,” said Trip Elmore, a project executive from Turner Construction. “The value engineering list that has bounced around the public realm has come back to life and we are reviewing that now. “
Last time the city undertook a value engineering process, city officials spent months vetting the items like changing the exterior brick veneer, reducing the amount of interior glass, pre-purchasing some materials before contractors need to use them to avoid anticipated rising costs.
The decision to return to value engineering came after an independent cost estimate for the project was made available to Turner in the last month.
“On Tuesday, we began a review of the [estimate] documents,” Elmore said. “We are not completely through [the] estimates yet. [The] estimate, as it always does in the construction world, it ticks only one way. As it ticks only one way you have to find a way to put that down. Either you validate or throw out the numbers along the way.”
Fully aware that the deadline for completing construction documents is within the next month – and making changes after that could cost money -- the project manager is hoping to expedite the value engineering process to have these options available when the city begins negotiating a guaranteed maximum price next month.
“The intent rather than [to return to] the six months of my life that I gave up last time…is to get together as a group or a representative group or something so that everyone is in the room …and make the decisions so it doesn’t take six [more] months,” said Rob Juusola of Turner Construction Company.
Alderman Anthony Salvucci, who sat through the value engineering process before and was at first dismayed to hear that similar items should be taken up for discussion again, expressed interest in expediting the process.
“If your intention is that the Board of Aldermen review the value engineering list again, I think you better perhaps schedule it early, if you have a March 15 deadline,” he said. “There are things that I am sure are going to [spark arguments] and to remove them at this point in time I think is going to cause problems. My suggestion is we [discuss the items] as soon as possible.”
Chrissie Long can be reached at clong@cnc.com.
