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Superintendent Press Release November 18, 2022

Dear Cedar Bluffs Families,

Have a happy thanksgiving, there will be no superintendent newsletter next week.

You may have seen the notice in the Wahoo newspaper regarding the school accepting applications for a board member. One of our board members is moving out of our school district and by law can no longer serve in his capacity. The only requirement to serve as a board member of Cedar Bluffs Public School is that you must live in the school district boundary. If you are interested, there in an application that you can pick up from the school. The school board will review applications, interview, and select the new board member in the December board meeting. By law the board has 45 days to fill this position and the individual will fill out the remainder of Mr. Giehler’s term, which ends on the first Tuesday of January 2025. Applications are due by December 9th, 2022, by 1pm. So far, we have had two individuals express interest.

I know many of you may be asking why the building process is taking so long, next to the school. There are a couple different ways for a school to build in Nebraska. One way is to hire an architect, design the building and then take bids from contractors and accept the lowest responsibility bidder. Cedar Bluffs Public School has used this process before but a couple of the drawbacks to this design, bid, build concept are that if the bids come in above budget, you might have to start all over with a new design costing more money for architect changes or just not do the project at all. Another outcome is you might get a bid in your budget, but you may not approve of the contractor that has the lowest bid or the subcontractors they want to use and thereby may not do a good job leading to change orders, which costs more money. However, a second process is call CM and Risk. In this process you hire an architect but before they are done designing the building, you hire a Construction Manager. The Construction Manager puts in an application and after looking at the initial designs by the architect gives the school a Guaranteed Maximum Price that the project will cost, that the Risk part. This is the process that Cedar Bluffs Public School has chosen to do on this project. The advantages are the Construction Manager is involved in the design process, trying to save money, and recommending cost saving ideas with the idea that they will eventually save the school money. Also, in the CM at Risk process the school is involved throughout the process even to the point of allowing us to pick our subcontractors, people we know will do a good job. And lastly since this building is being built with Federal COVID money (ESSER), everyone working on this project must meet Bacon Davis Wage Act and having a Construction Manager who will stay on top of that is very important. So although the process is slower, we think it will lead to a better building, more efficient design and since we knew what our budget was to begin with, we were able to make changes before they started thus saving us architect fees and change orders. Most Construction Manager at Risk projects will end up being 10-15% less than the guaranteed maximum price.. Just for instances, last week the CM was not only taking bids for concrete for the foundation, but he took bids separately for the rebar that was in the contract and ended up saving about $4,000. So more work, maybe a little slower process but in the end more efficient and since we have a guarantee price that it will cost, we do not have to worry about what the inflation could do during the build.

Have a wonderful weekend and happy thanksgiving!#Wildcat Pride!