School Change Orders Frustrate School Directors
Reynolds Construction On-Site Manager Rochelle Fennell details 10 change orders for school board directors’ consideration - including at least two due to design error.
by Jonathan Weaver
An additional 10 change order requests will be decided on by Armstrong School District board directors Monday – including additional costs for roofing and emergency lighting circuitry that made some wonder what happened.
Reynolds Construction On-Site Manager Rochelle Fennell explained both.
“The roof thickness was higher than the actual perimeter of the building,” Fennell said. “They had to add more around the entire perimeter to give it a water-tight condition.”
Answering a question by school board director Amy Lhote, Fennell said faulty design drawings were the cause for that additional cost.
All new conduit and circuitry is also necessary, as emergency exit lighting would have originally shut down with other lights.
“That’s clearly an architectural flaw,” Board President Joseph Close said. “It’s no news to anybody that those exit signs need to be lit.”
Fennell was glad the design flaw was caught in time.
Board Director James Rearic requested a copy of all change orders, and was told they are divided between administration and district request and unforeseen or architect change.
District Solicitor Lee Price said concerns are more with what is referred to as “added value.”
“The legal concept in Pennsylvania is: if it had been on the drawings to begin with, you would’ve paid for it,” Price said.
School directors have a current contingency fund of more than $1.5 million due to $700,000 in grant funding and change order refunds.
“I don’t want to spend any of it,” Rearic said. “But, it’s like building a house.”
Close understood Price’s perspective, as well as that of Rearic.
“It gets frustrating, but sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it,” Close said.
L.R. Kimball Project Manager Brian Hayes was not available last night, but is to be at the voting meeting Monday.
“The building that’s never built is the building that doesn’t have change orders,” Fennell said. “It’s common to have change orders – that’s why you have contingency. On paper, sometimes things look nice, but when you get into the field, everything doesn’t add up sometimes. You have that on every project.”
Main entrance lighting will also not be on continuously after a review of the district’s policy.
Fennell said most areas in the new school will be complete by mid-June.
In other news, more than 1,000 parents were opposed to any school district uniforms, enough for school directors to halt discussions on the matter.
About 1,450 parents completed the survey – 1,200 online and 250 via paper copies -, School Superintendent Stan Chapp said.
Chapp indicated the idea to see if there was any interest in uniforms was brought to the school board directors.
“The response rate was very high, so the results accurately depict the views of parents in our school system,” Chapp said. “37 percent thought that school uniforms would be an easy, affordable way to outfit their child, while 63 percent disagreed. 30 percent believed uniforms would provide an additional opportunity to promote a culture of learning while 69 percent disagreed.
“In total, 33 percent of parents were in favor of implementing school uniforms while 67 percent were not
Elementary Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Director Cheryl Soloski said there were three common themes from the parents not in-favor of the school uniforms: including cost, lack of individuality and being unable to encourage students to wear the uniforms.
“They had the idea that uniforms may take away the students’ sense of identity. Parents who were not in-favor of the uniforms felt that they would take the students’ individuality, their creativity and their ability to express themselves in their choice of clothing,” Soloski said.
The thought will no longer be discussed by school board directors. Board director Larry Robb was the first to comment.
“We’re not having any more discussions on this,” Robb said. “I’m not in-favor of looking any further.”
Robb – also program director at Freeport Area School District – said school uniforms have not been discussed during his five years in administration.
The school dress code – last revised at the end of 2006-07 school year – already prohibits students from wearing hats, sunglasses – except for those required for medicinal purposes – and any clothing containing obscene or vulgar words or prints, among several others.
Before the meeting, school board directors met to discuss personnel, collective bargaining, student confidentiality and real estate in executive session.
There have already been four school cancellations this winter due to weather concerns.
Armstrong School District | jweaver February 6, 2015
By Elderton Parent, February 6, 2015 @ 9:28 AM
Where is the accountability on the part of Kimball? With today’s technology, there should not be this many changes and additional costs. I would love to see the change orders because most of what is on there probably should have been caught prior to the build (i.e. flooring). Kimball should take the hit for those items. But I guess that is probably in the fine print of the contract.
The contingency fund (aka sports complex money) will dwindle down to nothing and they will be back to $0 towards the sports complex.
What a freaking joke. SMH
By sickofpayingforit, February 7, 2015 @ 9:00 AM
Have I, as a district owner who is paying for this mess, paid anybody to design that school? More clearly, have I paid an architecture firm or some other body of people to draw a blueprint? If so, than why are we rolling over and saying screw ups should be expected?????
C’mon. Only in government is this attitude possible!!!!!
By scott_starr, February 7, 2015 @ 9:01 AM
Faulty Design Drawings…. well, then why doesn’t the Architect pay for this error?
By definition, isn’t emergency lighting supposed to be on a different circuit than the everyday lighting?
Funny in the early 1900′s the Panama Canal was built, with 20 ton doors that open and close with a 25 HP motor.
Today, we can’t measure the proper height of a roof…. We’ve come a long way.
Just imagine paying to revamp 3 schools…. there would be 3X the errors.
By jorn jensen, February 7, 2015 @ 2:06 PM
Again, the article title takes the prize, “School Change Orders Frustrate School Directors”. The change orders frustrate other taxpayers also.
Hold the architect firm accountable - they have a contingency in their pricing also - don’t forget that.
By sickofpayingforit, February 7, 2015 @ 5:23 PM
Elderton parent/Starr-
How dare either of you even suggest that our tax dollars that are extorted from us, at the threat of being put out of our houses, should actually be spent frugally. I can’t believe the selfish nature of your comments! Shame on you! How in the world can we expect college educated architects and whoever else took two steps back when these screw up were discovered to actually do what they are paid for? Government/tax fed work is not about the final product. It is about getting paid! C’mon, you know this! One of you actually had the audacity to actually mention accountability. I was floored. Attitudes like that, where you are telling a tax fed body to actually have some accountability will get you off the popular team real quick around here. You both need to get with the program and just keep paying taxes and quit asking where the money is going. Jeesh. Way to go team players, way to go. I am disappointed in both of you.
By Rat_Smeller, February 9, 2015 @ 11:15 AM
I worked in the Architecture/Engineering field for 20+ years. During that time I worked on a lot of larger commercial projects. Change orders happen. They are a part of the construction process. Not every finite detail can be accounted for in the design process or show up on the construction documents - even with today’s technology. Change orders happen for a myriad of reasons, not always due to someone’s negligence or incompetence. Some times during construction owners see things that they want added that they did not think of during the design process (i.e. exercise centers in the Jr. High gym) That is why there is a contingency budget. The board and administrators have a responsibility to educate themselves regarding these change orders. Understand why these change orders are being made. If the costs are starting to go crazy then they need to draw the line and say “No More”. They have to sign off on and approve every change that gets made. They don’t have to “rubber stamp” the change order recommendation. Now, as far as what the construction manager (that represents the contractor) indicated as error on the drawings - We have not heard the Architect’s side of the story. We have only heard from the construction manager. I do agree with Scott_Starr above, if this is truly an error due to incompetence on the part of the Architect, then they should pay to fix the mistake. If the contractor has blood on their hands then they should pay to fix it. Also, I am curious to see if the Architect’s fee is a flat rate or percentage of the overall construction cost.
By jorn jensen, February 9, 2015 @ 10:35 PM
I was told, by two knowledgeable ‘politicians’ that the properties on the tax sales lists are just properties that people don’t want to pay taxes on and simply choose to abandon them. These ‘politicians’ claim that people are not put out of their homes for failure to pay their property taxes - there’s some sort of ‘out’ for people about to lose their homes. This was news to me. Anyone else heard of this?