New Haven Independent

The effects of the storm were among the subjects of discussion at Monday’s meeting of the Board of Education’s (BOE) Administration and Finance Committee, where major decisions amounting to millions are regularly made. Some of the latest decisions — involving contracts for builders of schools under construction — also came up for discussion.

Regarding the weather’s effects, Tom Smith, the BOE’s project manager in charge of Coop school construction, said, “The site is basically a big sandbox. It’s fortunate. The rain falls on all the native sand that’s there and gets soaked right down. No problem. It’s a very good setting.” By early to midwinter 2007, he said, the girders should all be in place, along with the “skin” of the building, and then the curtain can rise on the new school in the fall of 2008.

Smith is one of seven project managers who work for Gilbane Building Company, which the BOE has retained since 1997, when the school construction program began. Gilbane is to the BOE’s school construction program what Aramark is to the BOE’s operations, the primary subcontractor. “We basically function as the owner of the building, that is, on behalf of the BOE,” Smith explained, saying that each project manager has three or four schools in varying stages of design or construction that he or she oversees.

The managers attend the regular BOE committee meetings submitting requests for change orders, new contracts, which in turn are either concurred with and sent on to the full BOE for approval, or not; most items on a committee agenda usually get sent up for full BOE review. Gilbane’s project managers manage the construction companies retained to do the work, and the managers in turn report to BOE supervisory staff, headed by Sue Weisselberg (pictured below), and then to the board.

In addition to Coop, Smith is in charge of the Vincent Mauro school project. He asked the committee on Monday to approve an architectural agreement for $105,000 for “pre-design” services. “We need to see if it’s more economical for a complete new construction of this school or if we stick with the original plan to demolish one wing and renovate the other.”

BOE member Richard Abatiello (pictured on the right with school construction “czar” Sue Weisselberg and BOE chief administrative officer Robin Golden), who was subbing for the committee’s regular chair John Prokop, asked for an explanation

“Well,” said Smith, “the building we were going to renovate has some odd pie-shaped rooms. To get the mechanicals in there is going to require a lot of expense that we didn’t previously foresee, and it might be trouble. Weisselberg said that budgeting for both options needs to be studied.

Smith also requested $210,000 towards a construction management agreement with Fusco Corporation, which is going to build the new Metropolitan Business Academy on Water Street. Abatiello wanted to know what the BOE gets for the $210,000. “It’s all the schematics,” Smith elaborated. “All the material for the design phase, the project schedule, and all the bidding documents for contractors. It basically gets us right up to the beginning moment of construction.”

The BOE has acquired one of the two properties on Water Street, which will the site of the new high school. If the manager and construction companies stay on schedule, the new MBA should open in the summer or fall of 2009.

Robin Golden, referring once again to the weekend storm’s effects, said it would not be a moment too soon. MBA’s students are now housed in a leased building at 495 Blake St.. Golden said she had heard the parking lot of the school, where Whalley Avenue dips at Blake and Valley, was completely under water Monday. Likewise, the rug or carpet leading into the school is soaked. “The basement is flooded too,” she said, “but fortunately we don’t use or lease that space. The landlord is going to have to deal with that. Our kids and the principal at Metropolitan can’t wait to get into the new space.

“I’m going out to the school tomorrow to check things out. At a number of our schools, we use the spring break to do a big cleaning, too, and some of this might be hampered because of the water. We’ll see. In general, however,” she said, “we fared pretty well.”

These fellows were happy at the committee meeting too. Anthony Maselli and Nick Pagani, the project executive and the project manager, respectively, of C & R Development Company (of East Granby) were getting ready to turn the Beecher School over to the BOE. At the end of 16 months of construction, the $40 million new pre-K-8 school at 100 Jewell Ave. will receive its kids on Monday. Masseli said that his company has a terrific relationship with Gilbane, and that the team worked well on Beecher, and the community loves the school.

Beecher is the third school C & R has completed for the BOE; it also built Clarence Rogers and Katherine Brennan. And the happy marriage appears to be continuing. Among the other items approved at the meeting were various construction contract agreements for C & R to build the new Sheridan Magnet School, as well as to construct the West Hills Valley Swing Space, the first agreement for $2.8 million, and the latter for $1.1 million.

Sheridan is a $39 million project, Beecher was $40 million, and the Coop High School is slated to cost $66 million. For a complete summary of all NHPS’s construction projects and their status, click here.