Overton County Schools ready to bid out multiple projects at the system’s elementary schools.
Upland Design’s Brian Templeton said the construction documents are finished. Templeton presented a target bid date for each school project. The bid for Hilham Elementary will be first on August 26. Rickman will go for bid the following Thursday, and Allons will go out on September 4.
“What we would like to do, talk to contractors,” Templeton said. “We don’t want to bid all the projects on the same day because we’re going to have a lot of the same contractors bidding the projects. That would be pretty cumbersome for them to do and to keep straight what bid goes where.”
Templeton said there will be a pre-bid meeting for contractors on August 14. They will be able to visit each school and ask any questions they have about the projects.
All three projects will take more than a year to complete.
The projects at Allons and Hilham are to be completed within 400 days of the bid. Work at Rickman is expected to take 450 days because of the planned cafeteria expansion.
“We can go ahead and do that so that is completed and open for the upcoming school year,” Templeton said. “And then, the rest of the project would carry on for them to complete.”
Templeton said there were some issues in the soil at Rickman Elementary that required grating to fix. Templeton said the added costs will be offset by not adding sprinklers to Rickman’s playroom, which required approval from the fire department.
“We were able to provide them with a letter that said [the School System] wouldn’t use the room for assembly,” Templeton said. “Just for exercise and P.E. So, they were able to do that, so there’s some trade off there.”
Templeton said adding sprinklers would have been both pricey and inconvenient, as issues with water pressure would have required the district to install a new pump.
Templeton said portions of work at Allons and Hilham regarding side roads will be done next summer while the students are not around. He said this will allow workers to take down the temporary fixes and work more efficiently.
Templeton said a successful traffic study was recently conducted at Allons Elementary.
“We’re incorporating some of the recommendations on how to deal with some of the congestion that backs up onto the highway,” Templeton said.
Templeton said despite the soil challenges at Rickman, he feels good about the budget because comparable projects in Macon County came in under expectation. He said material prices have stabilized and there was plenty of competition for those projects.
Templeton said he expects plenty of interest in the Overton County projects.