On Monday, Sept. 28 the State College Area School District Board of Directors were given the second 90 percent cost estimate for the State High Project.
Massaro Construction Management Services presented the Board with an estimate of $140,332,300 following the $129,441,575 estimate from Crabtree Rohrbaugh and Associates, the project’s architecture firm, on Aug. 31. Both estimated their costs independently and did not include the near $4 million Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design grant.
The design members credited the difference in estimated cost to different opinions from the two firms as well as having two different approaches to coming up with the estimate. CRA gets their estimate from predicting the value of the low bids while MCMS gets theirs from the midpoint of all bids. Another difference was the amount of square feet each firm factored in the addition of the South Building floor plan.
Based on past Massaro estimates, the low bid of its projects average 12 percent below their midpoint of bids, and District of Physical Plant Ed Poprik said there is a good chance the same can be said for the State High project.
Board member Jim Pawelczyk praised the two firms for their estimates. He responded to the question of whether the district was able to pay for the project based off of the Massaro estimate by saying the board should be prepared to cover the entire range of estimated cost from the firm.
Board president Amber Concepcion used the two estimates as a tool for decision-making, saying the different estimated costs created an understanding of the range what they need to cover.
“Clearly, we have two estimates that help us understand the range of what we need to cover,” Concepcion said.
Because Crabtree Rohrbaugh is the creator of the architectural documents being used to create the estimates and have a better understanding for the 90 percent estimate, Massaro has raised questions and comments to the firm, which has lead to the refining of the documents.
“Because of the size of this project … it is critical for the next three years of construction that we have a nearly flawless set of documents,” Poprick said.
The updated 90 percent documents were created Sept. 25 and will be reviewed by Massaro who will then come up with a new estimate to present the board on Oct. 5, when the board will also vote on approving the release of the bidding documents.
