News-Record.com

GREENSBORO — Some school board members are uneasy about expanding the use of a relatively new construction practice that has been untested in Guilford County Schools.

So a committee will recommend next week that the Board of Education stick to its traditional practice of hiring general contractors for at least half of the projects on the 2008 bond.

"I am not willing to do this many projects (with construction management at risk)," said Anita Sharpe , a board member serving on the architectural selection committee. "It's too new to us."

Leo Bobadilla, the district's chief operations officer, recommended that the school system use construction management at risk for 15 of 27 bond projects. Instead, the committee — also comprised of board members Alan Duncan, Amos Quick and Darlene Garrett — reduced that number to 12. Most of the other projects would use the single prime, low-bid process that involves hiring a qualified general contractor for the lowest price after design of the school is complete.

The "at-risk" method differs from the traditional low-bid in that a construction manager is typically paid a fee to work with architects in the design of a building. Then, the manager hires subcontractors through competitive bids on its own, eating the costs that surpass the district’s maximum budget.

Guilford County Schools started using the at-risk method in 2007 with the rebuilding of Eastern Guilford High School. That school, estimated to cost $61 million, is expected to open in 2009. The board also voted in May to use the method with the building of a new Jamestown Middle School and renovation of Ragsdale High School, both projects on the 2008 bond.

Bobadilla pushed for the use of construction management at risk as a way to better organize and add flexibility to construction, minimize the need to hire additional internal staff, and reduce the likelihood of both expensive changes to design plans during construction and lawsuits with contractors.

"The low bid doesn’t mean the lowest cost at the end of the day," Bobadilla said after the committee meeting on Tuesday. "We need to get away from that mentality and start measuring costs at the end of the project and not at the day of bid."

But Garrett was not yet convinced that the use of construction management at risk would cut costs.

"I'm looking for saving money so we have money left over to apply to projects not on the bond," she said.