At the September 12, 2017 Board meeting, the Board approved Frank Schipper Construction Co. (FSC) as the best value contractor for the subject project, which was done in accordance with procedures and standards outlined in Education Code section 17406.
On December 12, 2017 the Board approved the Lease-leaseback contract documents between the District and the contractor.
The contractor and district have agreed on a Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP) for the project in the amount of $19,269,013. The total construction budget for this project is $ 16,684,077, with a project contingency of $ 1,668,408. The attached spreadsheet shows the proposed funding for the project.
As we have seen with the McKinley Boiler, Santa Barbara High Heating System, and Peabody Heating System Replacement Projects, this project has come in over budget. We can attribute this to the escalated costs associated with the installation of hot water heating systems. These types of systems are intricate and very labor intensive, and the scopes of work for these projects include very large proportions of the plumbing and mechanical trades. We are using the Lease-leaseback (LLB) construction delivery method for this project. One of the requirements for using LLB is that the general contractor must use a “skilled and trained workforce”, which means many of the trades need to staff the project with workers that have completed a union apprenticeship, or a certified equivalent. What we have heard from our contractors is that the local labor pool has been exhausted for the MEP trades required for the bulk of the work on these types of projects, so these subcontractors are coming from Los Angeles, requiring the extra costs of travel and boarding. This is the last of the large heating system replacement projects, so we are expecting future projects to be less impacted by this requirement.
The plans and specifications for this project would be a very large attachment and are located in my office and available for review by the Board and the public.