MSAD 51 board awards $1.8M earthwork contract for Greeley turf project; turf surface already ordered

The MSAD 51 Board of Directors voted April 17 to award a $1,800,000 contract for earthwork on the Greeley campus to RJ Grondin & Sons, the lowest qualified bidder, to prepare the site for an artificial turf surface the district previously ordered.

Superintendent Jeff Porter and the building committee described the work as the second of a two-part procurement: the turf surface itself and the earthwork to prepare drainage, sidewalks, utilities and other site improvements. Porter told the board the turf surface bid had come in below the district’s estimate while the earthwork bid was higher than originally anticipated because it included additional site work and discovery items, including arsenic remediation and necessary drainage improvements.

Porter said the district and the architect negotiated assumptions and removed certain items from the base contract (moving some parking and lighting work into bid alternates and deferring some nonessential windows and doors) to bring the project more closely in line with the budget. He said those trade-offs still preserve the long-term capability of the campus to add elements (for example, upgraded lighting) later.

“We had to account for the tariff contingency that many estimators are adding today,” Porter said, citing a larger-than-expected line-item contingency driven by material-cost volatility. He and other board members said the design and finance teams had layered multiple contingencies and had sought alternates that could be added back depending on the final numbers.

Board members asked about timing and the risk that delaying the earthwork would affect fall athletic schedules. Members said awarding the earthwork contract now avoided putting the turf purchase at risk because the surface had already been ordered, and they emphasized that doing the earthwork in the current sequence preserves safer drainage and reduces the ongoing maintenance burden on the existing natural field.

The board approved the motion to award the earthwork contract; the motion passed with no roll-call tally recorded in the public minutes.

Why it matters: Work on drainage and soil remediation is central to making the Greeley field playable and reducing repeated maintenance costs. The board’s vote commits funds to earthwork while other project items (notably certain parking and lighting features) were left as bid alternates or deferred to preserve overall budget alignment.