EAST PROVIDENCE — The committees overseeing the latest tranche of monies earmarked mostly for the extensive refurbisments of  both Martin Middle School and Waddington Elementary School have fingered the firm they want to perform pre-construction duties.

At its meeting last Monday night, April 10, actually inside the current MMS, the East Providence School District's Building Committee, upon the recommendation of a sub-group assigned to decipher among the applicants, approved the hiring of Shawmut Design and Construction, the Boston-based firm with an office situated locally in Providence.

The next evening, the EP School Committee itself unanimously accepted the decision of the Building group.

Shawmut was tapped over the Dimeo Construction Company, headquartered in Providence, in what many on the committee, including co-chair Joel Monteiro, said was a very narrow decision.

"It was close. Both companies received serious consideration. We felt either firm was capable of doing the work," Monteiro said after the Building Committee's forum. "It basically came down to the scoring of the sub-committee as laid out in the RFP (request for proposal): the cost factor, the interview piece, the proposal itself and their knowledge of the RIDE (Rhode Island Department of Education) processes."

The pre-construction process encompasses coming up with a final design, working along side Ai3 architects, and compiling the overall cost of the projects, working with the district's project manager The Peregrine Group located here in EP.

Shawmut, which is not guaranteed to become the lead contractor for the actual construction of each project, will be paid $200,000. Voters at the November 2022 election approved a ballot referendum allowing the district/city to borrow up to $148 million in bonds to pay for the Martin and Waddington proposals.

Like the $189.5 million high school project residents supported back in 2018, the district/city is expected to receive significant reimbursement from RIDE. The base percentage of reimbursement is 48.5%. By meeting other construction benchmarks that figure could rise by as much as 20% more.

Though the bond money would be spread in part across schools throughout the district, the majority of the funding would be directed towards the the near-complete reconstruction of the 46-year-old Martin structure, including a wing dedicated to the city-wide Pre-Kindergarten program, and for significant renovations to the some 60-year-old Waddington building.

Respondents of the RFP to perform the pre-construction duties were required to meet a rigorous set of some eight standards compiled by the district and its consultants as well as those set by RIDE. They included the firm's level of experience, how many jobs of this type it had completed and its inclusion of Minority/Women-owned Business Enterprises (MWBE) in its projects.

A four-person sub-group of the Building Committee sifted through the initial submissions, eventually presenting Shawmut and Dimeo to be considered/interviewed by the entire committee, which includes elected and appointed officials as well as the three principals most directly involved in the proposal: Martin's Laurie Marchand, District Pre-K's Karen Rebello and Waddington's Karen Moore.

When plans are finalized, having been approved by RIDE, the MMS and Waddington projects will be on separate tracks. The target start date for the more detailed and larger-scale Martin effort is sometime before the end of the 2023 calendar year with a completion date aimed for July 2026. The Waddington endeavor could begin by the fall of this year with an end date of July 2025. As budget allows, some additional elements could be tacked on to the Waddington portion.