School Construction Should Break Ground This Summer

Updating the school board at its Tuesday night meeting, an architect and two construction managers hired by the district said that construction work on a $78 million capital improvements project should break ground this upcoming summer.

Following v, the plans so far are up to speed - even ahead of schedule - as the engineering firm in charge of submitting the construction plans to the State Department of Education decided to stagger the applications one-by-one, sending them up to Albany as soon as each one has been completed.

"Typically because of the very intense design effort the architect engages in - it's extremely labor-intensive to produce construction documents - it normally takes about a year from the time the bond is approved until the time we can actually break ground on a project," said Nick Andreadis, chief executive officer of Triton Construction, pointing to the benefit of staggering the applications.

Larry Salvesen, an architect with Patchogue-based BBS Architecture, told the school board that plans for were sent up to the DOE on March 5, and plans are expected to be submitted this upcoming Monday.

Typically, Salvesen said, there is a 10-12-week turnaround time for school construction applications, meaning the district should receive comments on the Phillips application around the end of May. He said that after the district responds to any questions the DOE has, approval is typically given within a week. Following a bidding process, construction commences.

"Phillips will definitely get a good push this summer," Andreadis said. "We should be able to utilize almost the entire first summer and that will be our first groundbreaking. And that will be quickly followed by, hopefully - we don't control the State Education Department - we're hopeful that before the summer is over, that we'll start Riley and Aquebogue as well and get some critical elements of those projects out of the way."

According to a timeline presented to the board of education last fall, design plans were supposed to be in the works through August of 2012, followed by a bidding and award period lasting through February of 2013. A tentative construction start date of March 1, 2013 was estimated for the high school and elementary schools.

Plans for Riley Avenue Elementary School are expected to be sent in to the DOE by May 1, while high school plans by the fall. After $30 million in high school designs are sent upstate, BBS will start charting Roanoke Elementary, Pulaski Street School, and Riverhead Middle School.

Steven Brugge, a project manager with Triton, said he hopes to break ground at the high school by next spring, while work on the latter three schools wouldn't take place until 2014-2015.