The Greene County School Board has selected its contractor, but delayed approving the bid for their $35.48 million building project.

The project encompasses building a new high school, career academy, gymnasium and auditorium west of American Athletic Incorporated/Spaulding on south Highway 30 in Jefferson. At the regular meeting last week, the School Board received four bids, with the apparent low bidder being Henkel Construction of Ames. Their bid was $31,573,000, which was less than $4 million lower than the next bid. There were some deductions that each contractor was asked to consider different bid packages, and when Henkel took out a wood veneer ceiling in the auditorium and an antenna in the locker rooms, the bid dropped to $31,133,000.

Once everything was added together, including design fees for OPN Architects, land acquisition, existing middle school and high school renovations, and a three-percent contingency, the total project cost was $36,983,992 or about $1.5 million over budget. However, once the interest from the certified deposits from the general obligation bonds and energy rebates are added into the revenue side, the difference drops to $1,003,992.

Superintendent Tim Christensen says they are working with Henkel on value engineering to bridge the $1 million gap.

“Talk to them and say, ‘Is there anything you saw when you bid the project that if we did A rather than B would save us some money. We would like to get the overall project cost just down a little bit. We feel it’s within the boundaries of what we can handle but want to go through that process.”

Christensen notes that the Board is anticipated to formally approve the bid at their meeting in March, causing no set back to the anticipated construction timeline.