At a special meeting on Tuesday, June 29, New Fairfield’s Permanent Building Committee (PBC) approved bid packages totaling nearly $4M for the Consolidated Early Learning Academy (CELA). O&G’s Mr. Mark Sedensky walked the committee through the scope reviews, recommendation letters, and bid packages for CELA, explaining that they were for windows, flooring, roofing, architectural woodwork, painting, communications, and final cleaning. There are just a couple of project bids remaining to award, including waterproofing/air barrier/caulking and firestopping, but O&G was not ready to recommend contractors. Sedensky explained that it would be in the town’s best interest to re-bid the waterproofing/air barrier/caulking project given issues with two current bidders. He noted that materials have increased in price, but that the estimates shouldn’t increase too dramatically.
Sedensky explained that the final clean up costs ended up being tripled in price versus budget because the cleaners are being asked to visit the site twice, once at Christmastime and then over the following summer. He noted that the estimators might have missed that they will need to come back a second time which suppressed the budget amount.
New Fairfield’s Director of Business and Operations Dr. Richard Sanzo noted that a ceremonial groundbreaking for CELA has been set for Tuesday, July 27, at 3:30 p.m. Sedensky pointed out that, though the groundbreaking has been set for late July, there were construction staff officially on site starting June 28, the day before this meeting.
PBC members heard that the design for trusses for the new high school, a follow-up issue given that bar joists would greatly impact the schedule, is steadily moving forward. They discussed the cost impacts of the switch, which O&G’s Ms. Laurel Purcell had researched in the previous week. She learned that the town will likely save some money with the switch, though she didn’t have exact costs yet and the PBC agreed that the bidders should handle their own detailing, rather than going back to RAM Drafting who had completed the detailing for the bar joists.
There was a brief discussion about materials testing plans for CELA, after the topic had been tabled at a previous meeting so that members could review paperwork. In agreement with the plans, they approved over $50K to fund the testing.
JCJ Architecture’s Ms. Christine O’Hare reported on the high school’s fire tank plans, explaining that more conversations had occurred and many emails had been sent in the week leading up to this meeting. The bathtub-style tanks have been chosen and the size of the tanks are larger now. Everyone is reportedly now on the same page and all changes have been completed in the official documents.
JCJ intends to send paper copies of the plans for the tanks to NF fire official Mr. Mike Gill and the Town Engineer Mr. Tony Iadarola. She clarified for the committee members that the updates will be finalized in change orders, since the tanks for the high school and CELA were designed by separate firms and the current bid documentation does not have the most up-to-date information. Mr. Don Kellogg pointed out that the structural calculations are not in the spec paperwork, which the designer is going to rectify. O&G’s Mr. Jason Travelstead noted that the tank cost delta has not yet been identified.
There was a conversation regarding the fire department’s request to up the water system to allow for 75 minutes versus the code requirement of 60 minutes. Iadarola explained the request is due to the fire department being volunteer-staffed, which can lead to a longer amount of time to rally fire fighters. Gill explained the intricacies in determining the volume of water that they’ve requested on each campus in the fire tanks. The amounts have increased for the original specifications for a number of reasons, including the tremendous amount of water that is needed if there is a large fire event.
The next regular Permanent Building Committee meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, July 13, 7:00 p.m.