Stockdale explains school's choice for HVAC project process

By: 
Staff Writer Kate Wehlann

During their meeting on Tuesday, April 24, the East Washington school board held a 1028 hearing before approving two resolutions, each detailing their desire to move forward with a total of $9.5 million in HVAC renovations.

"When we talked about the HVAC project, the need for that was pretty apparent," said Superintendent Dennis Stockdale. "There was humidity, maintenance issues, worn-out systems. The elementary system was having problems with size issues. We took all that into consideration."

The school will focus on the elementary school first. That system will cost $4,294,000 and, with estimated cost of bond issuance, the total will come to $4.5 million. Then focus will shift to the high school and middle school system, which will cost $4,778,000, with the estimated cost of bond issuance bringing to total to $5 million. The school is bonding both projects at the same time to take advantage of around $175,000 in cost savings.

You can read more about the project here.

When it came time to approve the resolutions, only board member Hector Nale voted in opposition to the project resolutions for the elementary and high school (which includes the middle school) projects.

"I didn't agree with the process," Nale said. "I didn't like that we didn't get multiple quotes. We only had one vendor. I hoped we could come back with lower numbers if we had more vendors to bid it out. I do agree that we need to address our issues, though."

So why not go through the bid spec process?

When it came time to approve the East Washington HVAC resolutions, only board member Hector Nale voted in opposition to the project resolutions for the elementary and high school (which includes the middle school) projects. The resolutions approving the form of fourth amendment to lease, determining need for the project, reapproving the building corporation to oversee the project and a declaration of official intent to reimburse expenditures were all unanimously approved.

“I didn’t agree with the process,” Nale said. “I didn’t like that we didn’t get multiple quotes. We only had one vendor. I hoped we could come back with lower numbers if we had more vendors to bid it out. I do agree that we need to address our issues, though.”

Stockdale said Wednesday that the board went with a guaranteed energy savings process over the traditional bid spec process for multiple reasons.

“We control the outcome,” he said. “It’s guaranteed performance for 20 years and if there’s a problem, they write us a check annually. That puts pressure on them to design and install it correctly. There’s no change orders. It’s open book, so we see all invoices, labor time sheets and they rebate any savings back to the school.”

Stockdale said he had undergone this process for projects in the past and was familiar with it and had seen success.

In September of 2016, the school released an RFQ, a request for quotation, for a GESC provider and EMCOR was the only vendor that responded. EMCOR had done the HVAC renovations at Salem a few years previously and would go on to complete the solar field project at East Washington between then and now.

“We had been discussing HVAC upgrades, but then solar slipped in and we decided, with it being so new, we needed to move forward with that,” said Stockdale.

When they returned to HVAC, the board wasn’t comfortable with the design proposal from EMCOR and brought in a third party, Tom Durkin, to look at the specifications. However, the board wasn’t comfortable with that design, either.

“The longevity and performance weren’t what we wanted,” said Stockdale. “…Tom Durkin was a great consultant, but that design just didn’t meet our needs.”

So they returned to EMCOR. “It was all about the best solution for dollars available,” Stockdale said.

Two board members went with Stockdale on a tour to vet a system in Brownstown, which had just completed a similar project. Stockdale said the other board members told him they were comfortable with those two board members making the call after visiting that school.

“The workmanship was exactly what we were familiar with with EMCOR in the past,” Stockdale said. “EMCOR brought in their lead designer and designed a hybrid system and created exactly what we needed.”

Stockdale said EMCOR self-performs all mechanical work, so there are fewer sub-contractors.

Another reason Stockdale mentioned for continuing with EMCOR was their previous work on the solar field.

“Our school is 100 percent electric and very few schools are like that, so we wanted to benefit from our solar and wanted to maintain consistency and efficiency,” he said. “A lot has gone into this.”

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