A pile of dirt marks the beginning of construction at Mount Greylock Regional School.

School Building Committee members Nancy Rauscher, left, and Jesse Wirtes, along with Trip Elmore and Rachel Milaschewski of Dore & Whittier, participate in the committee's first meeting in the school's library.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock School Building Committee on Thursday received good news about the contingency budget on the district's $64.8 million addition/renovation project.

Owners project manager Trip Elmore of Dore & Whittier Management Partners told the committee that although some of the contingency is being used during the project's design development phase, that is part of the plan.

"We thought it best, and it's the way I've worked in the past on other projects, to keep as much scope in the job," Elmore said.

"We want to get the best building you can get for your money instead of being very conservative and maximizing contingency."

In round terms, he explained to the committee that it entered this phase of the project with contingencies on the order of 8 percent for design elements, 4 percent for the construction manager's unforeseen expenses and 4 percent for inflation.

As the budget has evolved, those "buckets" stand at about 4 to 5 percent for design, 3.5 percent for the "guaranteed maximum pricing" contingency and 2 percent for inflation, Elmore said.

Architect Dan Colli from Perkins Eastman backed up Elmore on the notion that the design contingency was supposed to diminish as the project evolved.

"The design contingency is supposed to drop," Colli said. "The whole point is to pick up things we haven't designed yet.

"I would expect the design contingency to disappear by bid day."

On the other hand, a fourth category of contingency funds, a $2 million owner's contingency, has not been touched, Elmore told the committee. As he explained it Thursday, that is where the committee could realistically lower the pricetag of the project.

"That's a better thing to keep your eye on," he said. "That's where savings generally come from.

"In Ayer-Shirley, they had $2.5 million in that bucket — so about the same amount. They saw savings of about a million and a half, and it all came out of that bucket."

The bottom line is that the project is still comfortably under its bottom line. In order to keep it there, the committee may need at a later date to engage in the process of "value engineering," essentially cost-cutting, a discussion that will begin in earnest at its Sept. 1 meeting, Elmore said.

In other business on Thursday, the School Building Committee learned that the final contract with construction manager Turner Construction has been finalized and authorized expenditures for hazardous material monitoring during the project's demolition phase and a technical assistance survey sponsored by National Grid.

The latter, when completed, will make the district eligible for rebates from the electric utility based on the project's energy efficiency.

Colli discussed another "green" aspect of the project, the LEED Silver designation that the district hopes to earn from the U.S. Green Building Council.

Colli said currently the project's specifications earn it enough points to be just over the line for the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver rating sheet, but the architects are looking for ways to get it well over that line.

"You usually want to go into the certification process with five points over," he said. "You don't want to be right at 50 [points] exactly.

"As we go [further into the project], we don't want our value engineering to affect our points. We don't want to lose sight as a team that there may be value engineering items we decide to take off the table that would push us below 50."

The Massachusetts School Building Authority, which is funding the majority of the project, offers financial incentives that lower the local district's share if the project achieves LEED Silver certification.

Colli noted that Mount Greylock's rural location in South Williamstown does not do the district any favors when it comes to the LEED rating scale.

"One of the things that doesn't work in our favor at this particular project is they really do look at urban projects," he said. "You get a lot more points for site development at an urban project. We don't have bus stops and bike racks and things they give points for in a city."

Thursday's meeting was the first the committee held in Mount Greylock's library. The School Building Committee and School Committee have been "evicted" from the school's meeting room, which has been converted to an orchestra room while the music department's old digs are being gutted for renovation.

Other evidence Thursday that the building project that is under way included the construction of a new main entrance at the south end of the building and earthwork being moved as part of a installation of a new bus loop on the property. The old bus loop ran through land that will be the site of the school's new three-story academic wing.

"We're off and running," Elmore told the committee.

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