HANOVER – The South Shore Tech School Building Committee voted in a special meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 13 to submit a schematic design budget of $276,449,480 to the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) by the required Thursday, Aug. 15 deadline. There will be a final schematic design vote at the end of the month to submit all schematic design documents and the MSBA will begin its review process.
“We have a budget,” said Chair Robert Heywood of Hanover.
The budget was being submitted on Wednesday, Aug. 14, according to Kevin Sullivan of LeftField, the owner-project manager firm working with SST.
MSBA had approved the project to move into the schematic design phase at its April 24 board meeting.
The district’s share of the cost at this stage is projected to be $167,581,808.
The project has also received a basis of grant of $176,213,157 and an estimated MassGrant of $107,119,978, before contingencies are factored in.
The district also has a base reimbursement rate of 55.00 percent, Sullivan said. However the projected reimbursement rate was increased because the building construction intends to meet higher environmental standards and also because the district has shown strong capital maintenance practices.
The Building Committee approved a total project budget is $276,449,480. The project team projects that the district will receive a MSBA grant of $107,119,978, leaving approximately $167,581,808 at the local level. The local share of 167,581,808, notably, is over $7 million dollars less than the projection made at the Preferred Schematic Report (PSR) phase earlier this year.
Based on maintenance and capital planning practices has meant the district has received 1.79, which means hard work done to preserve the building’s condition.
Most districts receive a 1.5 or lower.
“Getting this 1.79 percent is impressive,” Sullivan said. “It doesn’t happen that often.”
Additional reimbursements shave another $7 million from the preferred schematic report, according to the budget Sullivan reviewed for the committee.
The project was also under budget for the feasibility study.
“These are estimated costs,” Sullivan stressed. “We’ve done our best to manage costs, based on the information we have and based on our experience on quite a few MSBA projects.”
But until MSBA does their review in August and September, the exact ineligible costs will not be known. These exclusions are things the MSBA does not typically pay for. An example Sullivan gave was removal of contaminants such as underground tanks, if found on a site, and a number of them will be based on price caps.
“There are caps on every single part of this budget, to be honest,” he said. For example. MSBA never participates in the remediation of ceiling or floor tiles.
“These are projections, and I believe they are conservative projections,” Sullivan said of the budget totals he presented.
The preliminary design budget for the preferred schematic had been 260,000 gross square feet.
“We were tasked, as a project team to find ways to make the building more economical – responsibly of course – and to make it more efficient,” Sullivan said. “I think, with some hard work, especially by the architect and the folks at the Vo-Tech, here we are with a schematic design for the building [in which] the size has been reduced to a gross square footage of 249,365 square feet.”
In terms of cost, the changes have reduced the cost by $1.7 million ($2.1 million with mark-ups)
“This is one of the most important milestones in the MSBA’s process,” Sullivan said of the reason for three estimates – including one for $223,603,801 from the construction firm now on board – which maximizes the grant obtained from MSBA and reduces the original estimate by some $2.1 million.
The preferred schematic cost estimate of $283,595,433 has been brought down to the current total schematic cost of $276,449,480.
LeftField had been tracking the district’s share at anywhere from $176 million and $178 million with an MSBA reimbursement between $105 million and $107 million during the preferred schematic design phase. It is now being tracked from $167 million to a little over $169 million with an MSBA reimbursement of between $106 million to $109 million. The district’s share has gone down “significantly,” Sullivan outlined.
“In my experience, this type of cost regression is very unique,” Sullivan said. “It doesn’t happen a lot in MSBA projects. Typically, you’ll see the progression, but this whole project stayed almost exactly the same. Sometimes costs go up a little, sometimes it goes down a little, but in this case, it has gone down significantly, and I think that’s a direct response to your team’s hard work.”
Heywood asked if Sullivan’s firm sees this kind of cost regression often.
“We don’t see this often,” he replied.
“This is an exciting time,” said Mateo Battista, vice president and project executive at Suffolk Construction.
The savings had started in the feasibility phase.
“We’ll probably have money left over from that feasibility budget,” said Superintendent/Director Dr. Thomas J. Hickey. “Because the district funded the feasibility study with stabilization, when we’re looking at the local balance [local share of the project costs] at the end, we’re not actually financing that because we’ve already earmarked it.”
Sullivan also said some of the purchase of the adjacent house as administrative offices was that about 2,000 square feet of ineligible space for reimbursement in the new school building was absorbed that way.
“The result was a reduction of ineligible costs by the MSBA,” Sullivan said, noting it saved an additional $2 million – and the property did not cost nearly that amount.
“So we saved a lot of money by buying this property and moving [those offices] over here that you did not have to put in the new building,” Heywood said.
Another big portion of vocational building project budgets are the furnishings and technology costs, according to Sullivan, noting it is another area where spending caps apply.
“For as long as I can remember – and I can remember back to 2008 – that type of cap is exceeded in every school [project], even elementary schools,” he said. “On Vo-Tech schools, which require significantly more, that’s what results in a pretty significant exclusion.”
Committee member George Cooney asked if the furnishings and technological equipment for the new school would be moved in during the summer – and if there would be employment opportunities for SST students in that area.
“That’s a firm yes,” said Suffolk Senior Vice President Christian Riordan of the moving schedule. “There’s opportunities for student employment during the entire project. We’re committed to that.”
The next steps for the project are: submission of the Schematic Design Report to MSBA by Aug. 29; MSBA Board of Directors meeting on project approval on Oct. 30 and project approval votes by each member town in January 2025. The Schematic Design Report will be reviewed and voted on by the SST Building Committee on Aug. 27 or 28.