BHS/BTC Update April 19: Demolition Complete, Value Engineering Saves $3.9m

April 19, 2024

Dear BSD Community,

Demolition of the old campus is complete! EnviroVantage has turned 100% of the area over to Whiting-Turner (WT), who has been hard at work pouring and waterproofing Level 1 foundation walls, installing underground plumbing and electrical for Level 1, and continuing blasting on the upper portion of the site. The only remaining environmental remediation work to be completed involves capping the soils of a small area of urban soils in the area south of the former F Building and a small portion in the Arms Forest. This work will be managed by WT and we expect environmental consultant Fuss and O’Neill to submit a “closure report” for our Corrective Action Plan to the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation and Environmental Protection Agency after we finish these activities in the coming days. It’s important to note that even though we experienced challenges (such as finding additional PCBs and asbestos) in the foundation and having to find a new landfill after the one we were using closed), EnviroVantage was able to get this work done within the amount we had budgeted (including contingency) for remediation and demolition… thank you EnviroVantage!

Last month we also completed the Value Engineering portion of the project. As a reminder, we asked our architects and construction manager (Whiting-Turner) to work together to identify $4 million in savings from the project which would not impact form or function. In all, we identified $3,969,324 in savings! (See examples below.) This is a stone’s throw from our target and while there were a few hard decisions we had to make, we are happy that we were able to avoid reductions that would have compromised our commitments to the community. I hope you will join me in thanking everyone involved in this work to save taxpayers money while simultaneously providing the community with the building we need and our students deserve.

Please see below for a few updates on the project. As always, thank you for your continued support, and feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

In partnership,

Tom

Federal Funding Approved for Stormwater Project! Senator Welch’s office notified BSD that $1.2m in congressionally directed spending for our BHS-BTC stormwater project was included in the federal FY24 Minibus Appropriations bill that was passed on March 8th. Both Senators Sanders and Welch, along with Representative Balint, supported providing these funds. We are so grateful for this support!

Construction Budget – Our project remains on budget. We recently updated our construction budget to reflect approximately $1.23 million of cost increases. These increases, which are paid for by reducing our contingency, are a result of design refinements, raising the site elevation to account for more ledge than originally anticipated, and the addition of structural brackets to support concrete planks. Our current contingency, after accounting for these increases, now stands at $8.47 million (down from the $9.7 million approved in September 2023). Our project manager indicates that this is a healthy level of owner’s contingency for this stage of the project, but we will continue to closely monitor project costs.

PCB Reimbursement – We have submitted a request for $14.5 million of reimbursement for PCB-related removal and abatement work to the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). A total of $16 million was appropriated for this purpose, and the work is ongoing, so we expect that additional submissions will largely, if not completely, exhaust the appropriation. The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has thus far authorized only about $10 million of this request. To our surprise and disappointment, DEC is taking a very narrow interpretation of the state law that authorizes this reimbursement. In response, we are seeking a clarifying change to the state law to ensure that the legislature’s intent is honored and the full $16 million reaches Burlington.

Energy Efficiency – Freeman French Freeman has put together a memo to summarize the energy efficiency steps taken and measures incorporated into the BHS-BTC building design currently under construction. This is in addition to the energy model they provided us in September.

Permit – The City issued the full building permit for the project which will allow Whiting-Turner to perform all building and site construction including the erection of the steel which will start in mid-April!

FF&E – A launch meeting with the District’s furniture, fixtures, and equipment (FF&E) consultant, EEI, was held on March 29. EEI will be meeting with BHS and BTC leadership staff to discuss their needs and preferences. We also continue to look at salvaged materials from the old BHS to decide where we can best use them in the District and are working with our architects to purchase and organize the move-in process.

Value Engineering Examples – Among other things, these changes include replacing slate sculptings with attractive brick, changing the type of rubber tile, miscellaneous lighting changes, converting tile to a smaller format, reusing salvaged stone, replacing the insulation on ducts, changing the specified heat pumps, redesigning the commons railing system, changing the panel board amp designations, substitutions for ceiling materials and exterior soffits, reducing exterior LED strip lighting, and reducing the amount of entrance pavers. We did have to make one larger programmatic decision to eliminate a dark room, and we scaled back our kitchen equipment significantly.

District-wide Savings – HMS Receives New Auditorium Seats! Before we tore down the old campus, our property services team worked tirelessly to identify opportunities to salvage equipment to reduce our waste impact and save money. This included donating some equipment to other school districts, saving the new bleachers in the gym, and salvaging the auditorium seats for Hunt Middle School, which badly needed new seating. In September the seats were shipped to Michigan to be re-foamed and reupholstered, and the again-new seats are now in place at HMS. Not including property services time, we estimate that this work saved the District about $130,000!!