WHITMAN – The Whitman Middle School Building Committee met July 22 to review the project’s financial and construction progress.
The committee meets next on Aug. 26, where they expect to sign a beam in anticipation of a “topping off” ceremony.
The current cost to the town is $67 million.
“Sixty-seven million dollars vs $89 million has a much nicer sound to it,” said Committee Vice Chair Kathleen Ottina of the Finance Committee. “I thank you and the Fontaine Brothers [builders] for helping us meet a very ambitious goal.
Since the building project costs are “locked in” in general, according to Mike Carroll of owner-project manager Colliers, the inflationary effects of tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on imported materials will be minimzed or likely avoided since the contracts are already signed. But he admitted that “there are clauses that can temporarily come back and be adjusted.”
They would be taken on a case-by-case basis.
“That’s part of the reason we recommended to keep our portion of the bids savings within the construction project so that we have the ability to absorb [increases, if needed],” Carroll said., referring to the design team and Colliers, the school district’s representative. “I guess that’s a non-answer. I’m hoping the tariffs are not going to affect us. There is a potential in an extreme case, such as COVID was an extreme case.” Uncertainty in the global market can also affect the prices of domestically sourced building materials.
“As you know, when tariffs go up here, if you’re buying steel from Canada, the Canadian steel price goes up, so now everybody wants to buy American, and [then] the American steel price goes up because it’s at a higher demand. It’s like a chicken and egg kind of a thing there,” he added.
So far, Carroll said that he doesn’t think they’ve seen anything on such an increase happening.
“But some of the tariffs have hit and we know there’s a bit of ‘Buy American’ in the offing and we encourage that as something that should help mitigate that, as well ,” he said.
The unprecedented global pandemic caused that force majeure to kick in, preventing the fulfillment of some contracts, he said, but it would take something on that magnitude to increase the cost of a new Whitman Middle School.
He’s also been talking with people working on another project who say, if that was the case and they’d have to buy from an American company it wouldn’t’ force a force majeure impact. But if they had been buying from Canada and the price went up, that might be cause for legitimate discussion, he concluded.
“If we think it’s something that should be brought to you, then we will,” he said.
Drone photos provided by Fontaine showed the progress on foundation and utilities work on the school site. Since those photos had been taken, quite a bit of steel erecting had been done by the July 22 meting.
“There’s a lot of action going on,” Builder’s representative Justin Ferdenzi said. “There is a live camera on the site.
Assistant Superintendent of Schools George Ferro said the goal is to post a time-lapse of the building process on the school district’s web site.
“We’re working on it,” he said.
After an informal poll on the protection status for everyone’s toes, the committee opted to take a webcam ‘tour” of the site.