HANOVER — The South Shore Tech School Committee at its meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 19, voted to move forward with the feasibility study process for planned renovation project at the school. The Massachusetts School Building Committee voted to do so on Wednesday, Oct. 26.
“Our next hurdle, or milestone, is that we will go out to bid, hopefully in December looking for an owner’s project manager and, hopefully have somebody hired by January,” Superintendent-Director Dr. Thomas J. Hickey said this week. “Everything has to go back to MSBA to get their approval.”
The MSBA would not likely vote on an OPM until February.
“Whenever the next possible time is for us to move the needle, I want us to be ready,” he said.
Hickey said he doesn’t see anything going to the towns for any action until at least 2025.
“This is the document that MSBA asks districts, at the School Committee level, to vote on, which essentially confirms that we’re aware of the terms an conditions of this program,” Hickey said. ‘Our district will get 55.63 percent reimbursement on the $900,000 that this committee set aside earlier this year for costs related to the feasibility study.”
The costs would include the owner’s project manager and the designer. He said the MSBA voted to advance the project on Oct. 26, which begins the process of developing the documents with which to seek an owner’s project manager and, later in 2023, a design firm.
“That part of the process will take us through, probably, the spring of 2023,” Hickey said this week.
The School Committee will reconfigure into a building committee by 2023, for the project.
Hickey stressed the 55.63 percent reimbursement rate is not the rate for the rest of the project, that will be recalculated when the project gets nearer to the actual construction phase.
The committee also voted to contract with KP Law, formerly Kopelman & Page as the lead firm for procurement procedures involving the planned renovation project at the school and potentially to assist in a future.
Hickey expressed his appreciation for the Legal Review Committee’s help with procurement matters at the school, noting that the resource is helpful in concentrating on the non-educational portions of district business.
“There are matters that our district has to deal with that don’t always involve education,” Hickey said. He explained this week that he asked the School Committee to take on another law firm whose expertise is areas of construction and procurement so issues in those areas or regarding MSBA questions could be answered by experts.
“I have used KP Law when we had insurance issues, but we didn’t pick them, our insurance company assigns a counsel to something,” he said. “This is the first time that we, as a district chose to retain them as counsel.”
Stoneman, Chandler & Miller, the district’s existing counsel will continue to represent them on education-related matters.
“We’re just adding to the bullpen,” Hickey said. “Anything with MSBA, we need somebody who’s been there, done that with reviewing a contract or hiring a project manager and designer.”
KP Law will assist with procurement and the regional agreement update that might be triggered if Marshfield joins the region in the very near futur, as well.
The new window installation project should be completed by the second week of November, Hickey said, noting that, with work done on the second shift, there has been no detrimental effect on instruction.