Members of the Westerly Public Schools building subcommittee heard progress reports Oct. 30 on three active projects and discussed budget, site conditions and warranty issues.

Deb Reeding, the owner's project manager from Downs Construction Corporation, said Dunn's Corner crews poured the slab for the addition and are finishing the water-retention system; she said crews have removed rocks from outside the building footprint and are tallying quantities to determine whether further removal within the footprint will affect allowances. "They poured the slab yesterday for the addition," Reeding reported.

At Springbrook, foundation forms were ready to pour and the team is preparing to seal and close the building. State Street crews are installing aggregate piers but running into large rock that requires machine excavation followed by manual rock removal, Reeding said.

On budget, Reeding presented updated control budgets showing an unassigned surplus together with unused contingencies of $2,900,000. The Chair summarized hard-bid construction totals for the three projects at about $42,600,000, and the subcommittee discussed that the current surplus amounts to roughly 6.8% of construction cost, above a typical 5% contingency.

Committee members flagged site-specific operations issues: snow-plowing contract language uses cost-per-inch of snow (not square footage), which affects line-item pricing for expanded sidewalks; and a family inquiry about a memorial bench at State Street led the committee to agree to safeguard plaques/bench during construction and contact the family after site work is complete.

The subcommittee also addressed a gym floor at one site where repeated cleaning and attempted restoration left the wear layer compromised; the installer agreed to resurface the gym at no cost next summer, and the team will confirm whether full removal and resurfacing or another remediation method is required.

What’s next: Project teams will continue rock-removal tallies, coordinate site assessments with the town to avoid duplicate existing-conditions work, and follow up on warranty remediation and memorial-item logistics.