Central Falls committee hears high-school construction progress, dual-language K–8 design restarts

The Central Falls School Building Committee received updates on the new high school’s construction and the restarted dual-language K–8 design during its meeting.

Erica (Speaker 3), introduced as the meeting’s presenter for OPM/architect updates, said construction is progressing and pointed members to photos in the meeting packet showing siding installation, the circulation loop and interior finishes. She told the committee the project’s substantial-completion date “is holding at October 31.”

Erica said system milestones are moving forward: switchgear and a disconnect have been delivered to the site, which she described as a “significant milestone in terms of bringing electricity to the building.” She also reported progress on science-classroom casework, lighting and gym-area work, and said exterior basketball courts that had been demolished to make way for the high school are being replaced.

On finances, Erica said change order 9 used $90,444 from the construction contingency and that the team is projecting a construction-contingency balance of about $1,400,000. She said there are no change orders to owner soft-cost contingency and that the team will submit a reimbursement request (BOS number 22) for $4,767,082.07. Erica also noted a separate change-order reimbursement request for $90,887.92.

On the track and field, Erica said construction documents have been issued for final pricing and the team is awaiting bid responses; a revolving-fund reimbursement request of $94,021.26 was noted for related work.

Justin Thibault (Speaker 5), who introduced himself to the committee as “a principal at AI Free,” outlined the restarted dual-language K–8 design schedule. He said the project had been paused at the stage-3 schematic-design phase about two-and-a-half years earlier and that the design team’s current schedule targets a stage-3 submission to the SBC in August, design development by December, 60% documentation by March and bidding in June 2026. “Our first task is to ensure that what was done two and a half years ago is still accurate,” Justin said, and that the team will incorporate lessons learned from the high-school construction.

Committee members discussed procurement approaches and the possibility of early enabling or staggered bid packages to speed some site or demolition work. Speakers noted tradeoffs between construction-management approaches and lump-sum procurement, potential change-order exposure, and the importance of weighing risks and costs during schematic completion and cost estimating.

Justin said CAL will return to the existing high school on June 17–18 to photograph interior and exterior spaces for turnover documentation. He also reviewed the proposed three-story K–8 floorplan, described zone A as the lower-grade academic core and zone B as public and gym/dining space, and said the team is exploring adding separate dining areas for lower and upper grade clusters to reduce lunch-service duration and increase schedule flexibility.

The committee asked questions about early demolition, logistics for relocating equipment from the old high school, and workforce participation; Erica reported apprenticeship participation of about 19.19% and minority work hours at about 23%, with female work hours at about 1%.

Next steps include continuing schematic design for the dual-language project, completing estimating work (targeting an estimating set by July 9), awaiting final track-and-field pricing, and preparing reimbursement requests for submitted change orders.

The committee did not take further formal action on any of these items during the meeting.