posted by Joe Polk at 11:18 PM /
A month after bids for the Mt. Lebanon High School renovation project came in more than $15 million above estimates, the school board heard its high school principal, construction manager and architect describe 16 changes to the project that could yield potential savings of $14 million.
The changes included eliminating the rifle range, ending pursuit of LEED certification, changing the kitchen plans, raising the loading dock, reducing theater improvements, reconfiguring buildings B and G, shortening the phasing of the project and creating an on-site location for construction equipment.
Read the full article:
The changes included eliminating the rifle range, ending pursuit of LEED certification, changing the kitchen plans, raising the loading dock, reducing theater improvements, reconfiguring buildings B and G, shortening the phasing of the project and creating an on-site location for construction equipment.
Read the full article:
- www.post-gazette.com/pg/11139/1147535-55.stm (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Labels: high school renovation, school board, school district
3 Comments:
I was able to catch most of Horsman Drive Blues last night. I am thinking about ordering the video.
Observations:
1) Dr. Steinhauer is stepping up.
2) Mrs. Birks and Mr. Remely brought the most focus to the issue at hand -- When the wrangling is done, will the current design price out at the original construction manager's estimate or less?
3) The big cheese award goes to the big cheese at PJ Dick who indicated there are not several more million dollars to be found in this project, but nevertheless the bids will come in less when the project is re-bid, after 4 or 5 months of work. Mr. Cheese please refer to observation #2 -- Can this design be built for your $86 million estimate or less? Yes or no?
4) Mrs. Posti please stop reminding us the architect and construction manager are working for free. It only reminds us we have paid them millions and they screwed up - big time!
5) Maybe it is time to recognize we are out of our league and pay for some professional help.
6) Maybe we should renegotiate with the project team to answer Mrs. Birks and Mr. Remely's question first, with the level of confidence Mr. Kubit is looking for. It may not be part of the contract -- however, we could negotiate to use the free re-bid coupon later, rather than waste it now.
7) Please consider giving the architect and construction manager an hour behind closed doors with Mr. Lebowitz and Mrs. Capucci. I think we might find our path forward.
Bill (M),
One interesting thing that I learned from a previous school-board meeting at which a PJ Dick representative explained our estimates, was that the estimates were "95% estimates." In other words, they were conservative in the sense that among typical projects of similar size and bidding climate, only the most-expensive 5% would exceed the given estimate.
The problem with believing that a 95% estimate is conservative for our renovation is that our renovation is not typical. In almost every respect, our project is ambitious. Thus reasonable people should expect, from the get-go, that its cost would fall into the upper end of the cost distribution. So, what is a 95% estimate for a typical project may be more like a 50% or 33% estimate for an unusually ambitious project. Which our project is.
These are fairly elementary statistical concepts, which I'm sure are understood by at least a few people on the school board. What I'm less certain of is how many of them recognized the need not merely to trust our advisers' estimates but to understand those estimates and, more importantly, understand how much faith we should place in those estimates.
None of our advisers (or any advisers) deserve implicit trust; all are capable of mistakes. And when basing important decisions upon the information our advisers provide, it is our obligation to understand how reliable that information is likely to be.
After being burned on the initial estimates, the board is less trusting, yes, but I'm not sure they're adequately aware of their responsibility to own the information upon which they base their decisions. It's not good enough to pressure our vendors to give us better estimates; at some point the people using those estimates need to understand what the numbers mean.
Cheers,
Tom
Tom,
The construction cost estimate of $86 million, which was the official bid target and budget number, was a 90% Construction Document(CD)estimate by P.J.Dick last October !
Since that time there had been numerous changes to the design and eventual construction documents themselves, including the imposition of severe contractural requirements, up to even the Friday before bid openings the following Monday. However, the cost estimates had not been updated since last October...nor perhaps could they have been otherwise the $86 million *bogey* might have been higher to the point that the Act 34 requirements would not have been met....which would conceivably have caused state regulatory as well as local credibility problems for the District.
Someone might want to investigate the projects contractural requirements for cost estimates, particularly at the construction bidding point, and then opine on whether there was seemingly appropriate project oversight by the District.
Bill Lewis
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