Woodrow Wilson Building Committee

Woodrow Wilson Building Committee June 28, 2018 Minutes Present: Mary Bartolotta, Christopher Drake, Philip. Pessina, Christopher Bonsignore, Sheila Daniels, Ted. Raczka, Gene Nocera, and Richard Pelletier. Absent: John Giuliano, Kristen Byrd, and John Phillips, , Also Present: Dr. Michael Conner, Superintendent of Schools, John Cross, Director of Facilities, Ryszard Szczypek, TSKP and two members of the public. Meeting Called to Order: Chair Bartolotta calls the meeting to order at 7:08 p.m. Public Comment: Chair Bartolotta opens public comment at 6:08 p.m. Patrick McKenna, resident, parent and representing the Clean Energy Task Force states his interest in the Progress and the building goals and offers the Clean Energy Task Force to work with the committee and architect. He is also a LEED accredited architect. The Chair Bartolotta closes public comment at 6:09 p.m. Approval of Minutes: Mr. Pessina moves to approve the minutes of May 31, 2018; his motion is seconded by Mr. Raczka. The vote is called and it is unanimous. The Chair Bartolotta states the motion passes. Old Business: A1A contract: Chair Bartolotta reported last month they would add an appendix A and unfortunately that was not correct and by the time we figured out what took place we now have a Supplemental Contract. It went through the Attorney’s office and Mr. Szczypek responded quickly and it is on the agenda tonight. She asks if any questions or concerns about the revisions. Mr. Pessina comments it is all delineated and when I see owner, it is the city, BOE and the committee. John Cross it is the City and the committee is charged. MOTION TO APPROVE SUPPLEMENTAL CONTRACT Mr. Pessina moves to accept the supplemental contract; Mr. Raczka seconds. The vote is called and it is unanimous to approve. Chait Bartolotta states we need a line item to be created to execute and engagement Mr. Szczypek; unfortunately that has not come to fruition. We started 3-½ weeks ago. As ;you recall we met with Carl Erlacher and then brought it back to the committee and he came to the committee and stated on record what we would do and need the Mayor’s approval. It was clarified with Carl that Diana would be contact. Marie followed up and in the next couple of weeks from yes we can do it and no the BOE can do it. Marie followed up with City and they did not create the line item and said the BOE had to do it without contacting anyone. Marie pushed back and asked who would provide the monies and how can we move this forward. Chair Bartolotta states she contacted Carl and he met with the Mayor and the Mayor will not approve the line item until he gets an update from the Superintendent and herself. These are procedural steps that have never been implemented this way in a building committee’s history. I am asking you to approve this line to be created and ask Dr. Conner to contact the Mayor and find out what update he would need and why we need to go through these additional steps. Mr. Pessina asks if you are stating we can make a motion but the caveat has to be part of the motion upon approval of the Mayor. He needs to be briefed before he allows the line item to be completed. We don’t have the power to create it, but expend it. Dr. Conner asks what information he needs. Chair Bartolotta states it is procedural; Mr. Raczka thinks the sensitivity is the previous school and he doesn’t want something not to explode around him. Chair Bartolotta states that took place. She offered to do that. Mr. Raczka States the last building committee had problems and there were three separate building committees. Chair Bartolotta it is okay to have concerns and their are other building committees that have not had to do this. Mr. Raczka states it is the school. Chair Bartolotta reads Diana’s email regarding and other emails regarding the line item. Dept. of Finance needs the Mayor’s approval even after a contract has been approved and signed. It shouldn’t have taken 3-½ weeks to get an answer. Ms Daniels asks if Chris and she can comment at that time. Ms Daniels asks what are the protocols; Mr. Raczka can’t answer. Staff responds by Charter, any new line item in the budget needs Council approval, but she is not aware of any bond line items going to the Council for approval. Chair Bartolotta asked Tom Serra if it was done this way and if it is just an update, Carl could have said it was a procedural step and with the CM part I can understand speaking about that. I will try to figure out what he needs. It took almost a month to the other responses we have received. MOTION TO APPROVE THE REQUISITION/PO FOR THE ARCHITECTURAL FIRM Mr. Pessina moves to approve the po/requisition for the Architects. Mr. Raczka Seconds. The Chair calls for the vote and it is unanimous. She states the motion is approved. June 28, 2018 WWMS Bldg Committee Page 1 MOTION TO APPROVE PAYMENT OF BILL Approval of bill The Chair states there is a bill to pay Mr. Szczypek for the Survey from the BOE. These items have been created and it needs a motion to approve. Mr. Pessina moves to approve the payment of the bill for the survey; Mr. Nocera seconds. The Chair calls the vote and it is unanimous to approve the payment. The Chair states the motion is approved. Grant Notification Chair Bartolotta asks why this is on the agenda; Staff responds it is informational for the committee to know it has been received. RFP Review MOTION TO APPROVE THE RFP (additional motions regarding schedule and Requisition/PO later in the minutes) Mr. Pessina moves to approve the RFP for the Construction Manager-at-risk/Owner’s Rep for the WWMS Building Project and that it be advertised as soon as possible. Mr. Raczka seconds. The vote is called and it is unanimous to approve. The Chair states the matter is approved. TSKP/Site Assessment Mr. Szczypek was copied by a plan reviewer from the State and in going through the file for the project she said they need a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment for due diligence purposes to make sure that property owners conduct an environmental site assessment to be sure what has occurred here at the site and it was not something that was not environmentally safe and not cleaned up. You need services of an LEP for Phase I Environmental Study and it goes into ownership, historic mapping, and based on historical information, they will tell you what you have to investigate or not and it is completed for any State project. It is to make you aware of any environmental hazard on the site and there was a limited one done to the building and the State person was looking specifically for the site. The company who did the building review, we communicated with John’s office regarding the Site Assessment; we worked with this company and they did that service for the district and based on my recommendation they submitted a proposal to do this report. John Cross states using them would be to have consistency in the project, the CM would normally do it so he recommends the architect do it. Mr. Nocera they did the same with the sport complex and we had the architectural firm do it. Mr. Pessina asks if it was done for Pat Kidney can that work; Mr. Szczypek it is a different parcel. Mr. June 28, 2018 WWMS Bldg Committee Page 2 Raczka states if at all possible I would like to use someone locally, like GEO Insight. Mr. Szczypek states he is looking for direction. MOTION TO APPROVE ARCHITECTURAL FIRM HIRE CONSULTANT FOR SITE ASSESSMENT Mr. Nocera moves it go through the architectural firm and we do it this way for consistency. Mr. Raczka thinks Jeff King may beat the bid. Mr. Pelletier for consistency, the paperwork would be there. Mr. Pessina states we can direct you to find a local company. Chair Bartolotta we want the best one we can get. Mr. Szczypek states he can get more proposals and submit for recommendation from the committee. Chair Bartolotta states Natalie was following up trying to get a DAS deadline and that did not happen so we are not really sure what happened and she doesn’t want to hold it up too much. Mr. Szczypek can call the State and he doesn’t believe it is time sensitive and we need to make sure when CM is on Board, if there is a problem, we want to make sure it is in the CM budget. I will call to see if it is time sensitive. John Cross states they should try to get someone so it is done over the summer and if CM is on Board, we want him to have the report when he goes to the State. Often than not those first meetings with the State happen early in the process; we weren’t able to do that and typically Mayor's may go so they are more comfortable with the State and even though we have the letter, Mayor’s feel more comfortable to go up there and talk about it. I recommend we get the Site Assessment done. Mr. Drake doesn’t want to wait another month. Is there a benefit for the company that did the building assessment to do the property assessment; we are not expanding to the property. Mr. Szczypek states he likes to stay with the same firm for accountability and so that companies are not conflicted. The company quoted $20,000. So total cost would be $22,000 and that is our high water mark and if you are authorized to go out and hire someone with a ceiling, then you can go out and get it done. MOTION TO MOVE ON SITE ASSESSMENT Mr. Drake moves that Mr. Szczypek hire a Site Assessment company not to exceed $2,200. John Cross states his recommendation is whoever started it, should finish it and use them during the project. Chair Bartolotta asks if anything happened with the building? John Cross states he worked with them for many years and they are fine. Chair Bartolotta state sare they fine? Mr. Drake states Phase I Environmental Site Assessment authorize Mr. Szczypek to procure the services of a licensed environmental professional to provide a phase I Environmental Site Assessment not to exceed $2,200. Mr. Pelletier seconds the motion. The vote is called and it is unanimous to approve. Mr. Raczka states his big concern is having local opportunities for companies and they do not get a shot at a project. We ask people to pay taxes and they should be given the opportunity to make some money from those MOTION TO AMEND AGENDA Staff asks that the committee add an agenda item; she forgot at the beginning of the meeting to inform the committee that besides the RFP, the committee needed to approve a requisition for advertising. June 28, 2018 WWMS Bldg Committee Page 3 Mr. Pessina moves to amend the agenda to add approval for the Requisition/PO for the Courant to advertise for the RFP; his motion is seconded by Mr. Pelletier. The Chair calls the vote and it is unanimous to approve. The Chair states the matter is approved and the agenda is amended. MOTION TO APPROVE REQUISITION/PO Mr. Pessina move to approve the Requisition/PO for the Courant to advertise for the RFP; his motion is seconded by Mr. Raczka. The vote is called and it is unanimous to approve. The Chair states the matter is approved. Update Mr. Szczypek for Timeline Mr. Szczypek gave the committee a Gantt Chart for the milestones that need completion. He wants to walk them through it. The blue is architect activities and as project develops, you will see activities added. Red represents building committee activities and grey the construction manager activities. The first is schematic design, next design development and third construction documents and this will run from now until next summer that would involve architects, engineers and specialists. There will be a number of firms involved. The first deadline is Sept. 26 for completion of schematic design and you will know how big and what the school will look like; those documents will be used by your construction manager to do an estimate. The red is CM selection and is scheduled to run until August 17 in order to give the manager enough time to develop the schematic design estimate because they need to work with us while we are completing the design so you can make intelligent decisions on the various systems in the building. You need the estimate to accompany the schematic design. After that review, the committee will authorize Mr. Szczypek to do the next phase with a more detailed estimate from the Construction Manager. What we don’t show here is the State’s involvement. We have to have a State meeting at each stage of design and cost estimating and they will comment and weigh in on the design and cost. That outlines the design phase, it takes a year. The State will tell us when we can go out to bid and we think it will be September 2019 and there will be a bidding and award period running though from September to November 2019. Construction would start in November 2019 and run for over 20 months and complete it the summer of 2021. We have an earlier phase of construction activity which is abatement and demolition of the Auditorium to make way for the new building and that is scheduled for the summer of 2019 when School is out. He asks for questions. Mr. Drake asks what #20 is and what are we bidding and awarding. Mr. Szczypek the entire construction and site work; the whole project. Mr. Drake who is then owning that, the CM? Mr. Szczypek yes, he will administer the bid packages and get them; they are publicly opened and that manager will vet the bidder with a scoping review and the CM will have a presentation June 28, 2018 WWMS Bldg Committee Page 4 to committee to make his recommendation on the subcontractors. You are relying on the CM to work with the most responsible, lowest qualified bidders and that is what you are relying on. Mr. Nocera if you project a year from now, what is your best estimate at the cost at that time for this project; are we moving into inflation or issues of unpredictable bidding. TKSP said recent rumor is impact of tariffs on Steel and Aluminium; he hasn’t seen it as a bidding problem, but change orders and is being used as an excuse to inflate the cost of steel. Mr. Pessina the CM in consultation with the Architect before it gets to us; from what I am reading, the CM is under the purview of the Architect for changes. He is making an assumption that you support what he is recommending. Mr. Szczypek states the committee usually asks us our recommendation, but CM doesn’t work for us, but the City under the building committee and is responsible directly to you and there are terms that bind us contractually together. Regarding the bidders, the CM make recommendations, you can ask us, but ultimately you make the decision. Mr. Pessina when reading through the contract he likes the fact that communications as the architect and the specs and the CM wants to ensure it is done correctly and you, that it is done to your specs. Mr. Szczypek once agree, it is then given to the Committee. Mr. Nocera asks a project this size will attract some of the largest construction firms and the volume of work next year makes a difference. Mr. Szczypek states you will attract a lot of big construction managers and trades. Mr. Nocera competition is good. Mr. Szczypek we will need to have the discussion about local vendors and have to ask if things are in place. Mr. Nocera states there are procedures to include local bidders. John Cross states that is also in the RFP. Mr. Pessina asks if there are a lot of school projects. Mr. Szczypek states it is less than last year; Chair Bartolotta we are the largest project the State approved and the rest are about half the cost of ours. Mr. Szczypek states that is to your advantage. Mr. Drake asks about the early timelines; the big one is the committee selects the CM and we approved the RFP tonight and when the proposals are back by and it's June 28, and that is July. Even at the end we had John go through all of them and then we went through them. Chair Bartolotta states John and Donna and then we voted on the RFP, and we should amend the motion to include the schedule. Mr. Drake wants to talk through this and it goes out on Monday, that is July 30 then over two weeks to vet and select our first deadline and he doesn’t want to get off to a bad start and miss our first deadline. John Cross asked if purchasing can reduce their timeframe. Chair Bartolotta states 8 weeks but can get a response in 4 weeks. Donna said it could be four weeks but I don’t want to say that. Mr. Drake that puts us on July 30 and can we hit the August 17 deadline. Mr. Pessina between July 30 and August 17 they have to review submissions and then have a couple of meetings. Mr. Drake states it will hit the Courant on Monday and then we would have to have an initial cut and x number to interview then conduct interviews and then select but there has to be professional services to meet to approve this. Chair Bartolotta states it is a tight timeline; we stick with this and make it our goal. MOTION TO ACCEPT BIDDING SCHEDULE AS DETERMINED BY PURCHASING AND JOHN CROSS, FACILITIES DIRECTOR Chair Bartolotta wants a motion on the RFP to include accepting the scheduled Donna Imme, Purchasing Agent and John Cross, Facilities Director come up with for the RFP. Mr. Pessina moves to June 28, 2018 WWMS Bldg Committee Page 5 approve the schedule as determined by Purchasing Supervisor and Facilities Director. Mr. Pelletier seconds. The vote is called and it is unanimous to approve. The Chair states the matter is approved. Chair Bartolotta to Chris’s point to get agreement, to get the meetings for architect, this is a goal but we should be ready to work around it if need be. Discussion Mr. Szczypek brings up the need for a commissioning agent which is a requirement to meet the State High Performance School Guidelines. The State imposes some things and has imposed on projects with State Funding they must adhere to High Performance Guidelines. It is in response to the need to address energy conservation and green buildings. There is LEED and Green Globes but the State wrote its own goals and will accept the Silver LEED guidelines to show you are following the State High Performance School Guidelines. The Commissioning Agent participates in the design and later monitors the construction and writes independent reports and has to be independent from the architect and the construction manager for the state to prove the building meets the State guidelines and more importantly indicating defects and what they might be. If you have mechanical difficulties, you may have arguments between the architect, construction manager and company who makes them, the benefit of having this agent is an independent report and they state where the problem lies. It could be an installation problem and contractor who installed it is at fault or the architect and they want a third party to write those reports until a year after the school has been built. You need another RFP for Commissioning Agent. Chair Bartolotta states I do not recall this in the original proposal. Did I miss that. Mr. Szczypek below the line there are dollars for soft costs and there will be testing agents. Chair Bartolotta this is the Sate. Mr. Szczypek states yes; we can give you examples of those RFP’s and you need to advertise that. The committee has to do this as the commissioning agent is independent of the architect and construction manager. Mr. Pessina is it a long one; Mr. Szczypek no it doesn’t have to be and we can’t do this. Mr. Szczypek if local firms, they can be contacted. MOTION TO WAIVE THE RULES TO ALLOW PUBLIC COMMENT The Chair looks to the committee who agree to allow the Clean Energy Task Force member speak on this issue. Patrick McKenna states they have silver level of LEED and the State considers it the basic building practices for large projects and the silver is equal to the State and Commissioning Agent is best practice and the committee should do that to get a better building. If brought in early enough they can recommend for energy systems, green systems and the schematic design is the time to make those decisions to have those thought about at an early stage to avoid taking them on later. He states you should have the involvement of this so that it is more than the basic practice standard. June 28, 2018 WWMS Bldg Committee Page 6 Chair Bartolotta states our intention is to look at the most environmental friendly and cost efficient building we can within this budget. When I asked about the commissioning agent about where it is in the cost, I need to explain this to the Mayor. We are in agreement here we want the best building we can get and we spent a significant amount of time on this building. Patrick McKenna is not saying there is anything wrong with what the committee is doing. Mr. Szczypek reminds the committee that during the feasibility study they advised them to add a dollar figure for some soft costs. Chair Bartolotta we looked at geothermal and pulled monies out of the cost of the school because the site can’t handle that. We looked at the best outcome for the environment. Mr. Nocera it is a long time since they had a building project for the school system and hopes we have a serious discussion about solar and important things we can incorporate into the building with lasting impact and symbolically say we were careful in this project because it is our opportunity to view this now. Mr. Szczypek states the more you build into it, it is in your interest to do it properly at the beginning. Ms Daniels states we need to look at materials and everything that goes into the building for the students and staff. Mr. Drake states he answered the question that we needed another RFP for CX; Mr. Szczypek that is for the commissioning agent. Mr. Drake by Oct. 24. Chair Bartolotta states this is our guideline for now. I will follow up on everything and Chair Bartolotta asks if they need to vote on the timeline; staff replies no. Chair Bartolotta spoke to a former Mayor regarding bond line items and he stated Carl has never asked permission to create a line item. John Cross states most school building projects, the city or town finance folks manager it except where the Board has a business manager. 99% of the time it is the City or Town. Dr. Conner states he told Linda she should not do it. Chair Bartolotta states she doesn’t just want the Board to create a line item and then it is not funded. Chair Bartolotta to Chris’s point, I have over 20 hours of phone calls and follow-up and it is making this project difficult to be hyper focused and I don’t need to be bogged down by this. I will speak to the Mayor and when we are being dragged out a month at a time, it is not professional or procedurally correct. When she spoke to the director I should have been told immediately. Another special meeting was called to figure out what was going on. Dr. Conner agreed to contact the Mayor’s office for that meeting and we will do that once again. This is a third time we have to do this. Mr. Pessina asks if Carl will be part of the meeting. Chair Bartolotta will ask Marie to come to the meeting so no one can say someone didn’t do something. Chair Bartolotta states I instructed Marie to follow up every phone conversation with an email. There is no further discussion; Chair asks if there are any other questions or concerns. Hearing none, she asks for a motion to adjourn. June 28, 2018 WWMS Bldg Committee Page 7 Ms Daniels moves to adjourn and is seconded by Mr. Drake. The vote is unanimous and the Chair declares the meeting adjourned at 7:18 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Marie O Norwood Staff to Building Committee June 28, 2018 WWMS Bldg Committee Page 8