MANISTAY – With the second round of bidding for the Manistee District’s $30.855 million public school bond project set to begin in September, the district has scheduled two open sessions to provide information to local contractors and the public.
MAPS will hold a pre-bid contractor conference at 2 p.m. Monday at Kennedy Elementary School, located at 550 Maple Street in Manistee. The district highly recommends the presence of contractors interested in the project.
representatives from Christmann, the construction management company in the region; TowerPinkster, the area architecture firm, will be available to provide information regarding the practices, bidding requirements, bond and legal resources of eligible firms.
The Community Engagement Forum will be held at 5 p.m. Monday, also at Kennedy Elementary. The informational meeting will allow attendees to learn more about Kennedy’s renovations and gym addition at Manistee Middle High School.
The meeting will cover the scope and schedule of construction projects, the bidding process and the keys to success.
In May 2021, voters approved a $30.855 million district bond proposal to allow for the renovation of the Kennedy Elementary School building to consolidate all elementary grades, build a middle school gymnasium, and demolish the former 1927 Jefferson Elementary and High School building.
MAPS made an initial offer for the bond project in October, but accepted only one offer of $527,900 from Swidorski Bros. Excavating LLC for excavation work. The Board of Directors accepted the offer during a meeting on December 21.
No other bids related to the project were accepted at that time.
“In this second bidding round, we’ve realigned the criteria to broaden the scope of project elements so that they are achievable for smaller contractors,” said Howard Vass, MAPS’ business manager. “At the pre-bid conference, we hope to meet with local contractors and share information about upcoming opportunities.
“We’ve also created a community forum opportunity for any community members who might be interested in updating this project.”
“So the specification dictates to commercial contractors the exact product they need to use for different applications,” Schneider said. “We make sure that this specification is as open-sourced as possible, ensuring that we get competitive bids for even sub-components of the project and making sure that we don’t specify that one component has to come from one vendor, which in turn drives up costs.”
Schneider said Christmann was also aligning the sequence of construction activities with what was going on in the area.
“We’ve been looking recently at a healthy queue behind high school/middle school here that needs to be moved, but we need to be sure exactly what’s feeding into that so we know if it can happen during school and after school and when in the sequence that can happen,” he said. We are working to confirm these details before we publish the timeline, which is very important for bidders to consider when deciding whether to price this project in certain ways.”
Schneider said he would present the results of the bid to the board.
“We plan to return the completed proposal outcome to you either at the end of the board meeting in September — the schedule may be tight there — or at the board meeting on October 11,” he said.