The Lakeland school board unanimously approved two construction agreements Monday night — one for site work on the middle school project and another for the elementary school’s re-roofing project.
Pro Site Construction LLC was the lowest qualified bidder for the school site development work at $2,578,453.68. Adding another $250,000 for construction contingencies (a routine step for projects of this scale) brings the total amount awarded to $2,828,453.68.
At Monday’s special-called board meeting, Superintendent Dr. Ted Horrell said, “This is an exciting step forward in our Lakeland middle school project.”
Lakeland School System (LSS) opened 14 bids on Jan. 19 for the middle school site work, includes road construction, utility infrastructure work and rough grading. Bids ranged up to about $4 million.
The other bidders included Acuff Enterprises Inc. doing business as (DBA) Scott Contractors, Argo Construction Corp., B&C Construction Company Inc., Barnes & Brower Inc., Chancellor Brothers LLC, Dozertrax USA LLC, Enscor LLC, Ferrell Paving Inc., Ford Construction Co., Madden Phillips Construction, Vucon LLC, Wagner General Contractors Inc. and Zellner Construction Services LLC.
The past few months have seen hard work in the design development phase of the project, according to Dr. James B. Mitchell Jr. of Southern Educational Strategies LLC (SES). Now comes the fine-tuning of each room and all the building’s systems, such as communication, security, intercom, security and the data network.
“There’s a lot of work in the design development phase that just takes time sitting down, hour by hour, and getting it down on paper so you can write the bid,” Mitchell said.
Next is the construction documents phase, where the actual documents and specifications will be developed for sending out to potential bidders.
“So we’re moving forward in a timely manner,” he said.
For the site grading and drainage package, the next step will be for the architects and engineers to prepare the contracts, make sure that the contractor can produce the performance bond and all other elements of that stage are completed.
Then a pre-construction agreement will be held between the contractor, the superintendent, architects and engineers before the contractor actually starts moving dirt on the site. The goal for that is before the end of February, Mitchell said.
LES re-roofing and HVAC
Also at the special-called meeting, the LSS board selected Jolly Roofing and Contracting Co. Inc. as the lowest qualified bidder for the Lakeland Elementary School’s re-roofing project.
Jolly Roofing bid $628,431.00, and the board added a $16,000 construction contingency for a total award of $644,431. Bids were opened on Jan. 26.
The work will be completed during the summer of 2016.
Horrell also advised the board that there is a way within that contract to possibly purchase more HVAC units by removing the HVAC part of the project and rebidding it through the district’s shared services purchasing department.
Funding comes from a one-time $990,000 allocation set aside by Shelby County Schools, because the project was planned when it was still within the SCS system.
Written by Carolyn Bahm, Express editor. Contact her at (901) 433-9138 or via email to bartlett.editor@journalinc.com.
