School Bd Hires Project Manager For 5/6 School

By Jeff White

In its meeting Tuesday night, the Newtown Board of Education decided to take the recommendation of school officials and hire Strategic Building Solutions (SBS) as the project manager for their planned fifth and sixth grade school.

The school system’s Director of Business, Ron Bienkowski, has described the district’s decision to supplant the typical construction manager with a project manager as “a comprehensive approach to manage the 5/6 school project. This is an attempt to approach the project differently than we have in the past.”

Past school improvement projects, like the high school’s addition, have been overseen by a construction manager, who was hired and worked directly for the project’s architect. This relationship created a necessary conflict of interest, since the construction manager was essentially an arm of the architect. Legislative Council members have expressed concern that the 5/6 school may run into the same problems as with the high school’s addition, problems that were not brought to the council’s attention until it was too late to address them.

SBS will essentially act as an arm of the town’s building commission, independent of the architect. Its role is to look out for the interests of the school district, and the town in general.

SBS will, among other functions, recommend appropriate subcontractors for the 5/6 school project, and make sure all project contracts meet qualifications.

The Board of Education hired SBS for $922,100, the cost of their services. The fee will be paid progressively, depending on the amount of work that is done or is expected to be performed. The funding for the 5/6 school’s project manager will come out of the $1.6 million the Legislative Council approved for architect fees in late January.

With a project manager on board and an architect already drafting plans, school board members now look to April when they will have a chance to meet with 5/6 school architect Jeter, Cook, and Jepson for a detailed update on the progression of the project.

As of now, no definite date has been set when such a meeting will occur.