Plans for a renovated town hall in Oak Bluffs took another step forward Tuesday after selectmen voted to authorize Ned Collier and Stephen Moore of Boston-based Icon Architecture to engage a structural engineer to document existing conditions in the town hall and put out a request for proposals (RFP) for an owner’s project manager (OPM), a contractor who provides oversight of design and construction for the town.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Collier and Moore presented selectmen with a refined concept design that blended plans from the four concepts shown in October, and included new features based on input from each town department.
The refined concept design, which is not set in stone, features two meeting rooms on the basement level, accessed from the library parking lot; town clerk, tax collector, treasurer, accounting, assessors, and town administration offices on the main level accessed from School Street; and a building inspector, building commissioner, board of health, planning board, and other permitting on the upper level.
The town has been working with Icon to develop a plan to renovate the current town hall after a lengthy and failed bid process to build a completely new town hall. In 2017, town voters approved $9.8 million for a new town hall, but the following year, two separate bids for the project came in over budget, the last being as high as $11.1 million. A vote to approve an additional $1.3 million was shot down by voters at a special election in November.
Town offices have been located at the former Oak Bluffs elementary school since 2000.
Icon suggested bringing on a construction manager at risk (CMAR), a method that entails a construction manager who would be brought on during the design phases, to deliver a project within a guaranteed maximum price (GMP) based on specifications at the time of the GMP, plus any reasonably inferred items or tasks.
Town administrator Robert Whritenour said the town has not gone through a CMAR process before, but is open to alternatives. “We’ve done the filed sub bid process over and over and over again, with the same results that it always seems that our bids come in from the contractors higher than we estimated them,” Whritenour said. “We know we have a problem, and for that reason I think everyone is willing to listen to an alternative that might bring us together.”
Selectman Gail Barmakian said the town had a team of people overseeing the itemization and pricing of materials who failed to forecast an actual price for a new town hall. She asked how Icon’s alternative would be different.
The CMAR process has Icon work with an independent cost estimator, and a construction manager would sign a contract with the town to develop a cost estimate.
“They would be signing on under contract to the town with a guaranteed maximum price,” Collier said, adding that the majority of Icon’s projects are done with the CMAR.
The sealed bid process would be the same because it is a public project, but the difference is the construction manager owns the filed sub bid, as opposed to the filed sub bid going out and a general contractor being brought on board and inheriting the final sub bid. The CMAR is allowed under Massachusetts law Chapter 149A.
Instead of going into town meeting with a conceptual number based on cost estimates, the town would be going into town meeting with a contractual agreement on a guaranteed maximum price.
Selectmen will also send out a bid for an OPM. Daedalus Projects was the OPM during the failed town hall process. While selectmen agreed Daedalus had the ability to finish a project, they felt opening up the new project to other managers would be advantageous.
While Icon worked with a cost in mind, there is no current cost estimate for the refined design. Icon expects to have a number in late January.
The town is also nearing the final months of an 18-month lease on a set of temporary trailers across the street. The trailers were meant to house town employees while a new town hall was built, but the trailers have gone largely unused, and were broken into in June. The trailers are leased at $8,200 a month for 18 months. Once the lease runs out, the town has the option to rent the trailers on a month-to-month basis, leaving the possibility for them to be kept during the renovations.
Selectmen were pleased with the work Icon had done, and wanted them to continue.
“It’s one of the most sensible I’ve seen so far,” Barmakian said of the design.
Selectmen Brian Packish said there needs to be more public outreach as the project moves along.
The next steps will be for Icon to have an engineer document the building’s conditions, meet with departments again to further flesh out floor layouts, and begin looking at a design for the outside of the building.
“We are very much designing this from the inside out,” Collier said.