INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — The Indian River County School Board awarded Summit Construction of Vero Beach the job of reconfiguring the Alternative Center for Education into an Adult Career Technical Center at the Tuesday, Oct. 24 meeting.
The tech center will be for adults and high school students seeking dual-credit in upper-level technical classes.
The project site is 4680 28th Ct., next to Gifford Middle School.
The estimated cost is $1.83 million, which includes a 4,000-square-foot single-story vocational building to house welding and building-construction labs and classrooms.
Summit will also renovate the existing building currently housing the Alternative Center for Education, making it suitable for career-tech classes.
The price of the project is still to be determined, since the school board approved it as a “Construction Manager at Risk” project, in which Summit will guarantee a maximum price once the architect, Donadio & Associates, also of Vero Beach, completes workable drawings. Summit is “at risk” for costs exceeding the guaranteed price, hence the name for the procurement method, often referred to as “CMAR.”
Indian River County School Board Chair Charles Searcy voted against the project, simply stating he didn’t like CMAR projects.
“We don’t hard bid anything anymore,” he said.
School Board Member Laura Zorc said CMAR procurement means “We really don’t have control of the project.”
Because it is the fastest construction-procurement method, Zorc said she would vote ‘yes,’ but future projects should be brought to the board earlier, giving them a choice of method.
The construction manager builds while drawings are being perfected for other parts of the project, speeding up the construction time table.
The construction manager, not the district, bids the building-trades subcontracts. Summit gets a 4.5-percent markup on subcontractors’ labor and materials, 1.4-percent markup on Summit employees’ labor assigned to the site, $60,000 for the design phase and an as-yet-to-be-determined amount for the construction phase.
The Alternative Center for Education and the “Technical Center for Career & Adult Education” at 1426 19th St. will switch site locations by August 2018.
The ACE has up to 50 students at a time, some remaining a few months or longer before transitioning back to their base school. Students with behavior problems warranting separation from other students go to the school.
The tech center’s six “concreteables” or portable buildings will be the ACE students’ new home.