School board narrows field to four companies

By PATRICK E. LITOWITZ
plitowitz@ncnewsonline.com

New Castle’s school board will consider four Pittsburgh firms to serve as construction manager of the district’s early learning center.

In its special session Wednesday, the board selected Massaro Construction Management Services, Chronicle Consulting LLC, P.J. Dick Inc. and Thomas & Williamson to deliver presentations. The board will interview the companies during a two-day period. The dates have not been announced.

The hiring of a construction manager is the next step in the district’s $19 million renovation of the Harry W. Lockley Kindergarten Center into the H.W. Lockley Early Childhood Learning Center. The facility will house kindergarten through second-grade students.

The board had hired John M. Pappas of Eckles Construction Services as consultant. He ranked seven firms in eight categories.

“I had to find a way to be able to analyze it based on a set group of criteria,” Pappas said. “Every firm is different.

“(The system) took the companies with the most experience and the people with the most experience and elevated them to the top. It didn’t necessarily looked at them based on fee.”

Each segment ranged from zero to five points. Three areas focused on fees, hours needed to perform the work and the company’s distance from New Castle. Four categories centered on the company and its employees experience with Pennsylvania school projects. Lastly, the company’s thoroughness in completing its proposal was addressed.

The scores for the Pittsburgh firms ranged from 23 to 27 points. The three remaining businesses were ranked as follows: GP Construction Inc., Edinburg, (16); Scaparotti Construction Group, Cleveland, (13); and Pathline Inc., Altoona (12).
Board member Brad Olson and Anna Pascarella questioned the placement of Scaparotti Construction.

“They would be in the top one or two as far as construction experience.” Pappas said.
However, the business’ school projects were done in Ohio.

“(Ohio’s) system is just different,” he said. “It’s not how it works here.”
Olson said Scaparotti representatives should be permitted an interview.

“We are basically assuming they may struggle with some of the differences,” he said. “To exclude them because we don’t know whether they are able to handle the red tape in Pennsylvania without providing them an opportunity to respond to that I believe that’s unfair.”

Prior to determining which companies would be selected, board President Allan Joseph asked that Eckles Construction be included in the interview process.

Joseph asked Pappas to leave the board room before making the suggestion. Because the meeting was public, Pappas could have ignored the request but agreed to step out.

“They’re the lowest price,” Joseph said. “They’re the closest ones here. They’ve done other school projects for us before.”

Eckles Construction Services submitted a bid of $320,000. However, the board asked the firm to retract its proposal to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Eckles Architecture & Engineering is handling the architectural part of the project.
The two businesses are separate entities but have overlapping ownership interests.

“Price-wise, experience-wise, they’re probably there at the top,” Joseph. “I just wanted to throw it out in case anyone wanted to think about it or consider it.”

The board declined the request in a polling of the seven members present.