The bids for the construction have come in. The good news is there were 8 bidders. The bad news is the bids were much higher than expected. This is due in part to the pandemic’s effect on the economy. Building materials have skyrocketed recently due to inability to keep up the demand for lumber, concrete, etc. All the bids came well over our budget.
We are in process with Pact Design of Value Engineering (VE), a process where we ask our top three choices of bidders to enumerate the savings incurred by substituting, in this case, 36+ lesser costing alternates to the original plans for savings. Once we receive the alternate bids, we reevaluate our options. Our architect has encouraged us to have an open mind as to the reduced bids and to have the mindset of reducing costs before adding back in much-desired features. The VE packages from the bidders are due back Tuesday August 25. Our groundbreaking will be delayed until we have signed contract(s) with the contractor. This means an August groundbreaking is not in our future.
We were highly encouraged to have church volunteers do landscaping following the landscape architect’s rendition, and other outdoor projects. This would save a lot of money in wages. Some projects out-of-doors may be delayed until we can financially afford them.
We are also looking at other downgrades in the Church plans as in eliminating or decreasing certain entities within the building plans. This is a complicated process and will take a lot of time, teamwork with our architect, and energy to ascertain the best plan to move forward. The SST is dedicated to having this project proceed within our budget.
-Kathy Wheeler
