NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — McCann Technical School is preparing for a major overhaul of its 30-year-old roof and 60-year-old single-pane windows and will be shifting the school calendar to accommodate the project.

 

The vocational school was invited into the Massachusetts School Building Authority's accelerated repair program last fall. 

 

Superintendent James Brosnan told the School Committee on Thursday that 16 designers and engineers from Gale Associates spent three days in the school during April vacation assessing the project. 

 

"We did roof cuts, we did masonry cuts. We did all the examinations," he said. "We had sent them a tremendous amount of material ahead of time, electronically. I want to thank both [facilities manager] Gary Pierce and [CAD instructor] Greg King for having the files we could send electronically."

 

Staff also pulled the original drawings 1961-2 and from 1969 and 1974 additions, which were so brittle the crew had to take cameral images of them. 

 

"They did an awful lot of that research and an awful lot of physical evaluation to build up the recommendations," said Brosnan, who added that he and staff will go through the incoming reports and the facilities subcommittee will meet with owner's project manager LiRo-Hill, appointed by the MSBA, and Gale representatives in early June.

 

"They're going to make a presentation to the facilities group about here's where we are on the project. Here are the recommendation points. Here are the items that we can ask questions, make designs, make decisions, which way do you want to go?" said Brosnan. "At that point, they'll also have some dollar amounts, because right now we don't know, and I'm not going to guess, because that's just going to send everybody over the wrong edge."