Evanston/Skokie District 65 is publishing the first of three bids for construction work on the new Fifth Ward school Tuesday morning, June 4, Superintendent Angel Turner confirmed at Monday afternoon’s school board meeting.
This first bid cycle is for site clearing, ground improvements and demolition at Foster Field, which the district is aiming to begin July 20.
The soil there is “very challenging,” according to Brian Kronewitter, executive vice president of architect and construction manager Cordogan, Clark & Associates. Beneath the top layer of Foster Field is primarily silt and sand that does not have great “compressive strength” to support a building as large as the two-story K-5 school in the works.
As a result, the first step in this construction process will be replacing the existing soil, which costs about $700,000 and adds four or five weeks to the two-year project, Kronewitter said Monday.
Both Cordogan Clark and the district decided to bid out the construction work in three phases in order to break ground on the school sooner, and to save money by bidding the soil repair process and site clearing earlier instead of waiting several months to bid the entire project in one fell swoop.
Bidding for the second phase, which includes the building foundation and a precast concrete wall for the exterior, is scheduled to go out by July 18.
Getting a sense of overall costs
Those first two bids account for about a quarter of the project’s $48.4 million budget, according to Kronewitter, so the incremental bidding will also give the district a good sense of the final cost ahead of time and the ability to make any necessary spending adjustments to the third phase, which goes to bid by Sept. 5.
“We’ll know 25% or so of the value of the full project here in October, then the next bid group finishes the rest of it. We will have the whole project bought out by November of this year, which does two things,” Kronewitter said. “It allows us to continue sequencing construction … and this hits that bidding period at a very good time to get the most competitive bidding.”
Turner announced Monday that the district has made some adjustments to the design in the last month, making the specialty rooms for drama, art and music slightly smaller, but still the same size or bigger than other schools. Cordogan Clark also had to decrease the size of the multipurpose room planned for the second floor to the equivalent of two classrooms combined, she said.
Owner’s representative
At the same time, the district is working to hire an “owner’s representative” to be its advocate in overseeing design and construction details throughout the project, according to Turner and Kirby Callam, the district’s director of college and career, who has taken a lead role in Fifth Ward school planning. Callam described using an owner’s representative as “best practice” in construction projects, especially in this case, where Cordogan Clark is both the architect and construction manager, instead of just serving as one or the other.
To offset the cost of the owner’s representative, Cordogan Clark has agreed to reduce its construction management fee by 25%, Turner said. The board will vote on an amended construction management contract next week.
In a moment of candor, Turner acknowledged how difficult directing the Fifth Ward school project has been over the course of the last school year, from the news last October that the district could not afford the previously planned K-8 school to nearing groundbreaking on a modified K-5 facility this summer.
“To be very honest, I don’t know how much sleep I have gotten this year. But this [the owner’s representative] is to at least allow me to be able to close my eyes and know that somebody who has the skills and expertise can really carry this through,” Turner said. “… It’s a lot, and we want to deliver on a promise. But it’s hard. It’s hard every day, fighting, trying to make sure that we do what’s right, and not be scrutinized for it. And so whatever this district, me and my team have to do to do that, we’re committed to doing that, so we’re just asking the board for that support.”
Board President Sergio Hernandez replied that “you’re going to get that support, and we’re going to make this project happen.”
Financial projections for the bid process suggest that the cost of materials has flatlined a little bit from pandemic-era highs, according to Kronewitter. At this point, the board is crossing its fingers that costs stay as planned with the bids.
“We’re on budget, and obviously we need the bids to come back as we expect and hope, maybe even with room to try something different,” said board member Joey Hailpern. “I got to listen in on one meeting where the team was working on different variations should, for some reason, the bids come back in an explosively high manner. That’s a nervous part of the process, but it’s a big project, so obviously planning for those risks are important and helpful.”
District 65 inches closer to Fifth Ward school groundbreaking is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.
