Building Committee Tables School Improvement Bid Recommendation

Members of the Coventry School Building Committee met on Thursday to review and discuss bid proposals received for Architectural Engineering firm services. The need for the services is the result of a successful bond campaign held last November 2012, during which five school improvement bonds were passed by Coventry voters to fund various projects throughout the school district.

Sealed bids were accepted from Feb. 4-28, 2013 at the School Administration Offices on Flat River Rd. that contained proposals for miscellaneous renovations at six of the district's schools. Projects include roof repairs, a new athletic complex at Coventry High School, air quality upgrades, paving/sidewalks/flooring and fire code upgrades at the high school, the latter of which need to be completed this summer as the Rhode Island Fire Code Appeals Board will forbid the school to open in August if they are not.

Click here to view the complete Request for Proposal. The full scope of work can be found in the School Improvement Bonds column published in November and in the attached presentation.

Nine companies submitted bid proposals as of the 12 p.m. cutoff on Thursday, eight of them providing bid amounts for all five projects, and one, 4 Site LLC, of Coventry, bidding on the athletic complex only.

Asst. Superintendent Michael Convery explained that more than half of the bids arrived on Thursday morning, only hours before the deadline, leaving little time to review each one in detail before the Committee meeting scheduled for 5:30 p.m.. Because of this, members unanimously voted to table their bid acceptance recommendation to the Town Council until their meeting on March 5. No applicants were eliminated. 

"I skimmed through the applications before this meeting but there wasn't nearly enough time to look at every one," said Convery. "But from what I saw, it looks like almost all bidders have prior school experience, except one, but they do have town municipal experience and their designs are quite good."

"There's no way we can possibly responsibly award this tonight," said Committee Chairperson Bill Finnegan. "We need to read through all of those documents, come up with a decent analysis of what skills they each have and get a group together to analyze it properly over the next week so we can make the right recommendation."

Based on this decision, the Committee voted to form a Sub-Committee comprised of Finnegan, Convery and fellow Committee members Tom Hetherman, Steven Lopez and Director of Technology and Buildings & Grounds Jason Martin. The group met Saturday morning and will again before the March 5 Committee meeting to thoroughly review each application and present their findings. Once the Building Committee has selected a bid(s), the recommendation will be put before the Town Council for final approval.

Click here to view the School District's Bond Bid information page that will be updated throughout the process.