WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock School Committee on Thursday agreed to spend more than $100,000 in additional funds to get an outdoor equipment storage facility online.

 

The new structure at the middle/high school will be used to protect equipment needed to maintain the fields at the school.

 

The district had hoped to complete the project for less than $200,000, but complications in the project and increased costs during the course of the project necessitated bringing that figure up to $314,000, Business Administrator Joe Bergeron told the committee.

 

Bergeron sought and approved the committee's blessing to use up to $134,000 more from the capital gift the school received from Williams College in 2016.

 

"Given the way this project evolved, the district specified a building that it wanted, a pre-fabricated type [building]," Bergeron said. "It arrived six months after it was ordered, which was much delayed versus how that was originally supposed to happen.

 

"In the meantime, the plan had been that the site work required would be one project where quotes would be requested and the erection of the building would be separate and so-on. Electrical would be separate, insulation, heat. That process definitely did not go as it could have or should have. And, as a result, we are now in a position where every step along the way, things have not gotten done as efficiently as they could have or should have, and things have been delayed a number of times."

 

He said that among the issues that have arisen during construction is a need to better handle drainage around the new building to protect it from runoff at the site on the eastern edge of the campus, approximately where a former airplane hangar stood.

 

Bergeron said he has learned some tough lessons during the project, which the district thought it could handle without going to the expense of hiring an owner's project manager. He said he hoped the building's cost still could come in below the $314,000 cited on Thursday but wanted to have the extra cushion to make sure the structure gets built.

 

"Joe has come in to manage this," School Committee member Carrie Greene said. "He's essentially become the project manager, and we don't want to do this to him again, which is why we're hiring a project manager for the next project, which will be a lot bigger.

 

"Thank you, Joe, for solving this problem, and it is what it is. It's an investment in managing all of our fields. The equipment will go into this structure."

 

In answer to a question from committee member Julia Bowen, Bergeron reported that the Williams gift – originally $5 million that remains part of the college's endowment – stood at about $4.7 million in January. From that, the School Committee also plans to fund the construction of a new grass multi-sport field and an outdoor track; in the last round of planning for the athletic field project, that work was estimated to cost nearly $3 million.

 

"I 100 percent understand that here we are, and we need to move forward," Bowen said. "I just want to name my nervousness around what will be left in the Williams gift. I understand that was the January projection. The market has gone haywire, expenses are only going to go up.

 

"I think we all need to be cognizant of that. It seems we're perilously close to having less than $1 million left [for extraordinary building maintenance at the school] after the field, which is not where we wanted to be."

 

Greene noted that the money on the multi-sport field and track is not spent yet, and that the School Committee could make a decision on whether to pull the trigger on that project based on the value of the capital gift at that time.

 

In a related vote on Thursday, the School Committee authorized releasing a request for proposals for an owner's project manager to oversee the athletic field and track project.

 

"Given the scale of project and timeline we're looking at in terms of trying to get a designer on board in the spring or summer to do the [design] work so we can get it out to bid in the winter and have the contractor come next spring and summer, it just makes all the sense in the world for us to navigate that this way and have an OPM taking us through all those steps," Bergeron said.

 

Greene, one of two School Committee members who served on the panel during the middle/high school building project, endorsed the idea.

 

"I absolutely support the hiring of an OPM," she said. "This is going to be, if not a complex or complicated undertaking, at least a relatively large project, and we want it to go as smoothly as possible and want it to be such that it does not draw on the time and energy of the administration more than need be."

 

Bergeron said it was difficult to anticipate the bids that the district will receive from architects offering OPM services on the project because there are not as many projects with similar scope – unlike with a new or renovated school project. But he said the rule of thumb would be 3 percent of a project's cost for the OPM or $90,000 for a $3 million project.

 

The School Committee agreed to authorize its Finance Subcommittee to work with the administration on developing an RFP and putting it out to bid in hopes of having proposals to review as soon as the next School Committee meeting in May.