NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The School Building Committee on Tuesday approved a contract with Colliers International to take the Brayton/Greylock school project through the next steps. 

 

The fee is $224,509 for services over an estimated 21 months beginning in March. The funding was approved last year by the School Committee to come from the school choice account.

 

"So this contract represents all five modules, 2 through 5, all work beginning in March of 2022 through November of 2023," said Superintendent Barbara Malkas. "It is broken down based on the staff equivalency per month in terms of their FTEs and their assignment based on a percentage, that and then that percentage is applied to a monthly hours in order to determine the total number of hours."

 

March would begin putting the team together, and then the feasibility work will run between June and April 2023, followed by the schematic design phase and then funding.

 

"From really March of '23 through November of '23 would be when we would be doing the work of identifying how much funding was needed for the project, as well as the provision of funding for the project," Malkas told the School Building Committee. 

 

"The first order of business is identifying the design team, entering into the feasibility study process, which takes the bulk of the amount of time and then, based on the work of that feasibility study process, we will clarify and identify a particular design and then they will enter into the schematic phase and create that design."

 

The OPM Selection Committee voted unanimously on Feb. 3 to recommend Colliers over two other finalists. A total of 16 companies indicated interest in the project and six submitted responses.

 

Colliers was the OPM for the award-winning $30 million Colegrove Park Elementary School and the Williamstown Fire District selected Colliers last year for its fire station project.

 

Malkas said Kenneth Guyette, who shepherded the Colegrove project, will return to work with the city again. Guyette, in a letter to the committee, said he would be acting as project director with the assistance of Phil Palumbo as senior project manager and Thao Nguyen overseeing the financials.  

 

Colliers is anticipating more than 1,100 hours of work to get the project to the funding stage and has already filled out the OPM contract template required by the Massachusetts School Building Authority.

 

Committee member Tara Jacobs asked what would happen if more time or team members were needed. Malkas said she had been told that any in-house services would be included in the cost. Additional funds have been reserved as part of the feasibility study for items such as site evaluation, she said.

 

Business Administrator Nancy Rauscher said the MSBA has seen this contract many times.

 

"It's very standard in terms of contracts that they've executed with other districts on similar projects," she said. "So [Guyette's] expectation is that the MSBA would not be surprised by anything that's detailed there in this particular contract."

 

Malkas said she anticipated having Guyette attend the next School Building Committee when she hoped to inform them that the MSBA had approved the contract.

 

The contract had been expected to be submitted by last Friday but Malkas said she wanted to wait to get the full approval of the School Building Committee.

 

She noted that the contract with Colliers is only up the point where a vote will be taken on funding the project. 

 

"If we were to continue with them on as a project manager through the completion of the project, at that point we will be negotiating a new contract for the construction and punch-list postconstruction phase," Malkas said.