The Oregon-Davis School Corporation may be starting over with its HVAC project. Superintendent Bill Bennett says the school board decided last week to discontinue services with EMCOR, a year and a half after it hired the company as a guaranteed savings provider.
“We couldn’t really agree on scope and sequence with them, of what we’d have done, so we’re going to go a different route to try to maybe do it a little more economically,” Benett explains.
One major concern has to do with the unit ventilators at the high school. Under EMCOR’s proposal, the school would only be able to afford to take care of about nine classrooms for air conditioning installation. “That’s one of the reasons why we’re going to seek a different provider, so that way, hopefully, we can get more rooms, if not all of them, done. Basically, with EMCOR, we were looking at replacing pretty much everything and putting new in. We are going to look to see if there’s someone out there that, maybe, can refurbish some of the stuff we have but yet, still be able to get coverage for both buildings and get the whole project done.”
Under a guaranteed savings contract, a state-qualified provider guarantees that the work will pay for itself over a certain period of time, through reductions in energy or maintenance costs. Now, Bennett says the school corporation will readvertise the project, both as a guaranteed savings contract and a traditional bid process, to open it up to other engineering firms, air conditioning services, and construction contractors.
