Norwalk City outlines design, schedule and safety plans for new PK–8 campus

These are exciting times for Norwalk City School District. Consultants and district leaders presented an overview of the design, construction and commissioning teams and walked the board and public through a preliminary timeline and key design priorities for a new PK–8 campus across the street from Norwalk High School.

The presentation explained roles and schedule. Garvin Miller (architect) described the team’s visioning process, which included workshops with district staff, administrators, board members, teachers and community members and visits to five comparator schools. Paul Settle of Garvin Miller said Laura Little will be the “day-to-day” project manager and named Katie Vinger as lead architect and Luke Bauchner as the on-site liaison as the work moves into construction.

CT Taylor, the district’s construction manager at risk, told the board it will participate in the design phase and then manage bidding and construction. Ian Picetti, CT Taylor project manager, said he will be the district’s primary point of contact during construction; Dan Nichols will serve as site superintendent. Matt Collier, CT Taylor chief executive, said the firm will run a prequalification and vetting process that considers safety records, local capacity and prior work as the team sizes and packages bid scopes.

Matt Gable of STEM Engineers explained commissioning, calling it “a quality assurance process that verifies the building systems are designed, installed, tested, documented [and] meet the owner requirements.” He described commissioning tasks that begin in design and continue through…