The Peterborough Select Board took another step toward the construction of a new fire station Tuesday after approving the creation of an request-for-quote (RFQ) selection team to determine construction and architectural services.
Prior to the vote, the board heard a fact-finding presentation on the work being done to build a new fire station from Director of Public Works Seth MacLean.
Fire Chief Ed Walker, who attended the meeting, said in July that he hopes the final design for a new station will be in place by December 2023 in time for Town Meeting in 2024, and that “if all goes as planned,” bids could happen in the summer of 2024 with construction soon to follow. MacLean’s presentation confirmed this general timeline.
In 2021, the project to build a fire station on Elm Street had been in the planning phases under the purview of the Municipal Campus Task Force. Budget Committee members balked at the proposed $23 million price tag, and town officials later discovered that the bond for the cost would put the town over its state-mandated debt limit.
The town had also been hoping to receive an infrastructure grant from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and chose HKT Architects for the preliminary design of the fire station. The ARPA money never arrived and Town Administrator Nicole MacStay said the goal now is finding the right design team and finding the funds for a new station.
In May, Town Meeting approved an amended article for a $1.3 million bond for design and engineering of a new municipal campus and fire station on Elm Street, on the site of a deserted motor pool building. In October, the Select Board provided 70 percent of total bond capacity target for the project.
Following the 2022 Town Meeting, MacLean said he was asked by MacStay to figure out what the next phase was.
“My charge was to go out and gather as much information to inform our project and process for project delivery and to report back to the Select Board with recommendations,” MacLean said.
One of the key points and recommendations MacLean focused on Tuesday was balancing the programmatic needs of the facility with the availability of funding.
“I’ll say that a little more bluntly. The community has said the project was too expensive and we needed to bring the price down,” MacLean said, before showing the Select Board a timeline of the activities and studies that have been done over the past 17 years, beginning with an analysis in 2004 of Evans Flats, the area off of Elm Street where the proposed fire station would be built.
MacLean proposed two project-delivery methods to the Select Board, including a “design/build” method where the owner (which is the Select Board) and the contractor/designer have direct contact. The other method proposed was “construction manager at risk” (CMAR), which was used with the library renovation project, MacLean said. Some benefits of this method include an alignment of costs with the scope prior to the guaranteed maximum price (GMP), mitigation of risk for the project owner and increased project control for the community, particularly in the design phases.
MacLean’s recommendation was to form an RFQ development and selection team for a construction manager and architectural services that includes community input as well as Select Board direction regarding project value and evaluation of alternatives, as well as supply-chain issues and market volatility.
“I think construction management makes sense for our community,” MacLean said. “We want to know what our total project value is leading in to a Town Meeting vote and not to exceed that. I’d like to go out to bid for a construction management and pre-construction services followed by selecting an architect.”
MacLean presented a timeline for establishing goals and expectations and contract awards.
“I will start as soon as tomorrow,” he said, adding that by Dec. 22 he would like to develop RFQ documents and a scoring matrix. This would be followed by going out to bid for construction manager services by January, development of an RFQ for architectural services by February and going out to bid for architectural services by March.
The project schedule from March to December 2023 would include the appointment of a steering committee, community engagement, design development and approval of biddable construction documents, with a Town Meeting vote in May of 2024 and a construction bidding process in June.
Walker said residents can take solace in the fact that the town is committing itself to loans and bonds, as well as a well-thought-out process.
“It’s a process the town can feel comfortable with because it’s being done responsibly by its elected officials,” he said.
MacLean recommended the creation of a development selection team as the first goal. Some of those people would include Select Board member Bill Taylor as the project liaison, Walker and Tim Herlihy, Peterborough’s code enforcement officer.
“The project is about to get very real,” MacLean said, asking the Select Board to make a motion to chose a path forward.
The Select Board approved a motion to move forward with an RFQ selection team for a construction manager and that MacLean will draft a document for the construction manager as well as the architect.