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Roof Bids Below Budget

Opening these envelopes is how school building committee members spell relief: On March 26, the sealed envelopes with the contractor bids for the middle school roof replacement were opened, and the lowest qualified bid was still $300,000 below the district’s budget for the job.

Eleven contractors submitted bids to replace the roof. The lowest technically qualified bidder was Allied Restoration Corp., with a bid of $1,218,776 for the base bid plus alternate one. Very close but a little higher was the second-lowest bid of Silktown Roofing at $1,236,000 for the base bid and alternate one.

Last week the School Building Committee recommended to the Board of Education that it award the contract for the middle school roof work to the low bidder, Allied Restoration. The Board of Education then voted to take that action.

The building committee’s budget for the middle school roof construction phase of the work was about $1.6 million, so the winning bid was well below this number.

The middle school roof construction work will begin on June 22, just after the Old Saybrook schools break for the summer months.

Also planned for execution this summer is the other town-bonded school project, replacement of the Goodwin Elementary School windows.

The building committee received seven bids for this work and is currently evaluating the bids received for their compliance with the bid specifications and to assess which alternative scope options on which the contractors’ bid they will authorize.

“We’re still reviewing and scoping with the two lowest bidders,” said Pendleton.

The two lowest base bids for the Goodwin window project were from Rudolph Netsch Construction at $1,556,619 and Nosal Builders at $1,565,000.

The lowest bidder changes, however, when the specific alternative one is added to the base bid. In this case, Nosal Builders’s combined bid at $1.591 million is lower than Netsch’s combined bid of $1.609 million, which is why the building committee continues to evaluate the options before making a recommendation to the Board of Education.

The town’s original budget for the window replacement project was about $1.4 million, a little higher than the two lowest bids, but the lower-than-expected roof bids mean the building committee has a cushion and should be able to accommodate the higher cost of the window portion of the project.

Since construction at Goodwin School windows and the middle school roof will begin when school ends, the school district’s administrators are discussing a plan to limit student access to the two campuses this summer for safety reasons.

“We anticipate we will not have any programs during the summer at Goodwin Elementary School or Old Saybrook Middle School due to the two construction projects,” said Julie Pendleton, the school district’s director of facilities and administration.

The school district’s summer school will be moved from the middle school to the high school during this construction summer. The one exception will be a one-week summer science program. This will continue at the middle school this summer, but will be scheduled to avoid conflicts between the roof construction work and the classroom work.

Some of the summer Parks & Recreation programs also may have limited access to outside field areas close to the middle school, according to Pendleton.