The Public Building Commission: Palluzzi, Tamsin, Banca (chair), and Cianci. Killelea was absent.
The Public Building Commission took a step forward last week in the $88.2M Walsh Intermediate School redo by narrowing the field for an owner’s representative.
An owner’s representative is a third party company hired to represent the owner, in this case, the town of Branford, to monitor the design and construction process as well as the general contractor. A divided Representative Town Meeting approved the project last month.
Seven companies submitted RFQs for owner’s rep for the Walsh school project.
Request for Qualifications (RFQs) were submitted by seven companies: CREC Construction Services of Hartford, Turner Construction of Shelton, Morganti of Danbury, Construction Solutions Group (CSG) of West Hartford, SFV/DPM of Hartford, Colliers International of Madison, and Arcadis of Middletown.
Board members met at Canoe Brook Senior Center last Thursday to discuss their impressions of each company before narrowing down the field to four: Morganti, Arcadis, Turner, and Colliers.
They presented their choices and were pretty much in agreement.
Marci Palluzzi said she preferred the smaller firms and expressed concerned about state reimbursement. She said she liked the fact that Arcadis addressed “problems coming down the pike.” She added that she also liked Colliers, a local mid-sized firm, experienced with schools and with architects on board. She expressed the same sentiments about Morganti.
Leonard Tamsin said he believed Arcadis is “very good on value engineering, abatement, challenges and solutions, which will eliminate stop and go” during the construction process. He said he also liked CREC, a smaller firm, since they were familiar with the grant process. But he said he was concerned with the company’s workload and wondered if personnel would be maxed out. “The 10- to 12-weeks school is unoccupied is critical,” he said.
Tamsin added that Turner is able to handle large projects, they have good value engineering, and experience with schools. (They worked on a couple of phases of the high school renovation and served as construction manager for the new fire headquarters.) He said he didn’t know how they fared with those projects. Morganti, he said, is large, capable, and well qualified; he said the company had a favorable recommendation from persons who worked with them on Guilford High School, adding that the downside is its workload.
Paul Cianci said he liked Colliers and Arcadis. “They had experience at similar jobs.” He said he was impressed with Turner’s package, adding that he went back and forth between Morganti and others.
Commission Chair Peter Banca favored Turner, CREC, Morganti for the same reasons cited by the other commissioners. “We don’t have to pick four – it’s at our discretion,” he said.
Banca relayed the preferences of James Killelea, who as a member of the Inland Wetlands Commission attended a Costco public hearing Thursday night. Banca said “for the record” Killelea named Morganti, Turner, Arcadis, and Colliers; Killelea added that costs were not addressed, but that was not part of the RFQ.
Town Engineer Janice Plaziak
Town Engineer Janice Plaziak said she agreed with most of the comments, adding that CREC is competing with the Hartford area. She noted that any abatement will have to take place during the summer.
Banca questioned which company has the greatest experience with reimbursement, which will vary greatly with the state budget. He cited Clemente School in New Haven, which was reimbursed 95 percent, built on an open space plan like Walsh, and “it doesn’t work.”
Plaziak said the need calculation is based on the town; that the city of New Haven gets more state funding.
Banca said 98 percent of Walsh was paid for by the state. “Should we go back to the state?” he asked. Plaziak said that wouldn’t be possible.
Plaziak laid out the schedule for proceeding with the next steps of the project. A site visit and walk through will take place Feb. 22 to help the finalists put together proposals. She noted that she has 67 pages of information from original construction plans for Walsh. She said the Request for Proposals (RFPs) from the four finalists will go out Monday with the proposals due March 7. Interviews and selection will be March 14 via executive session.
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