By Megan Kelley
Staff Writer
LAKE ORION — The Lake Orion Community Schools (LOCS) Board of Education approved bid awards for part three of the Blanche Sims Elementary project as well as some district-wide project change orders.
The board voted 6-0 to approve both requests at its July 20 board meeting.
Blanche Sims bid award
The district received five bids for the two contracts. The bids for part three of the Blanche Sims project include site paving, playground equipment and temperature (HVAC) controls.
Both the playground and site paving portions were re-bids.
“The specific pieces of this bid were re-bid. For instance, the playground piece was taken out from a prior earlier bid because we weren’t satisfied with the results,” said Assistant Superintendent of Business and Finance John Fitzgerald. “We turned around and, in this instance, we framed it as ‘here is the amount of funding that you can spend. Please give us your best plan back’ and that was the approach to the bid.”
The board approved the bid awards in the amount of $1,035,300 with allocated contingency and allowances in the amount of $472,294 for a total cost of $1,507,594.
Funding for these projects will come from sinking fund resources and series two of the district’s bond.
Project change orders
Project change orders include scope changes at Scripps Middle School as well as changes to furniture movers district wide.
“We have established, in front of the whole bond program, some operating rules and one of them refers to if we have an allocation of funding authorized by the board, and a change of scope occurs within that authorization that causes an increase in the requirement of funding authorization from the board that exceeds $100,000, we bring it to the board for formal authorization,” Fitzgerald said.
At Scripps, HVAC equipment, piping and ductwork were not shown in original construction drawings and upon beginning renovation at the school it was found that additional door and frame replacements are also needed.
The Scripps changes total $356,476.
The scope changes that impact the entire district are changes to the current contract.
“The district currently has a furniture-moving company under contract whose role is the execution of the moving and removing of existing furniture, placement of new furniture and the decommissioning of old/damaged furniture,” district documents stated.
The board voted to add to the contract the moving of additional furniture work.
“It’s not an issue where (the) scope wasn’t grasped or underestimated, it was intentional in terms of a two-phased approach to it. The first set authorized moving work associated with actual construction work. Now this is asking for an increase in that authorization to coordinate and do moving associated with the furniture work,” Fitzgerald said.
The furniture scope change totals $132,988.