CT Construction Digest Friday November 4, 2022
Darien wants to renovate three elementary schools for $68M. See what they're proposing.
Mollie Hersh
DARIEN — Now plans for the newly designed Ox Ridge School have been unveiled, three more of Darien’s elementary schools due for upgrades have gotten their first approvals.
KG+D Architects Vice President Erik Kaeyer unveiled concept designs of the proposed Hindley, Royle and Holmes elementary school additions at a Board of Education meeting last month. The designs were unanimously approved by the Board of Education.
The estimated construction budget for all three schools is a little over $68 million, with base bids coming just under budget, officials said. All three buildings were last updated in the late 1990s.
The new construction is designed to fit within the Board of Education’s core recommendations, including removing all temporary portable classrooms, renovating or replacing libraries and learning commons and incorporating sustainable design. All schools must also provide an inclusive range of learning environments and maintain design continuity across the school system.
Stormwater drainage and adding parking, aimed at 95 spaces, are also part of the new construction plans.
Superintendent Alan Addley thanked the HHR Building Committee and particularly Committee Chairman Christopher Price for leading the project’s development.
“The excitement in the district, and particularly around these schools and their communities, around the development of these projects, is just palpable,” Addley said.
All three designs have been presented to the Architectural Review Board and are expected to enter Planning and Zoning hearings toward the end of November.
While the proposal is still under review, Architectural Review Board Chairman Liz Geiger said the board was "very much in favor" of the plan presented during a special meeting Oct. 18. The board's primary feedback was ensuring cohesion between the existing structures and new additions and clearer landscaping plans.
"I think it's a really positive report, and I think you guys luckily don't have yet another whole list of things you have to now integrate into this project," Geiger said.
For Hindley Elementary School, plans include adding a new 11,200 square-foot wing for the library and special subject classes including world languages, art and music.
The current library at the front of the school will be removed and the school’s original facade will be restored to create a more open entrance for students, according to the plans.
The designs also include expanding classroom size and creating additional resource spaces for each grade level.
The exterior will feature a new outdoor classroom between the existing structure and the new wing, an outdoor lunch area and an asphalt playground.
To ease congestion during school drop-off and pick-up, the proposal includes cutting curbs to create a new exit from the school grounds and a new pedestrian walkway to improve safety when crossing Boston Post Road.
For flood mitigation, plans include an underground storm pipeline and a stormwater basin.
Base bids for construction have come in between $1 million and $1.8 million under the $22.8 million budget for Hindley.
Holmes Elementary School plans to expand by adding 8,000 square feet of additional classrooms, including a two-story addition for first and second-grade houses and fourth and fifth-grade houses.
The school would also have a new entrance leading to an additional art and music wing and extend its learning commons space into the renovated courtyard.
Finally, the Board of Education is in the process of acquiring 32 Hoyt St. — also known as the Curtis property — to house the school’s entire stormwater management system.
The original plans included a parking lot on the Curtis property, but after receiving concerns for safety from Lake Drive residents, Kaeyer provided a revised version during the most recent HHR Building Committee meeting on Oct. 19 that shifted parking to existing lots.
Base bids for the renovations are about $1.5 million over the $20.7 million budget, but the costs would balance out with the under-budget work at Hindley and Royle, officials said.
For Royle Elementary School, the plan includes an estimated 17,000 square feet of additions for a two-story first and second-grade house and a single-story art and music wing.
With first and second-grade moving to a new space, the existing third-grade classrooms will be expanded. Added space will also include more room for the learning commons.
To make way for the new school additions, the rugby field at Royle — already a modified field — could be made even narrower or potentially moved to Middlesex Middle School, officials said.
The school would also add several more parking spaces and a subsurface stormwater detention to mitigate flooding.
The base bid for construction comes in approximately $500,000 under the $24.5 million budget.
General additions
All three site plans include renovations to make schools less fossil-fuel dependent and increase energy efficiency, including dual electrical heating systems, updated ventilation systems and replacement of any existing fluorescent lighting with LED.
Not reflected in the current construction plans but suggested by KG+D are roof replacements for all three schools, which have not been fully replaced since 2006. The combined cost for all three roofs is estimated at $3.6 million.
With the need to replace existing roofs, the Board of Education would have to defer plans to install rooftop solar panels.
Board of Education Chairman David Dineen confirmed that waiting to include solar panels with a new roof in place would be the most efficient course, and the discussions it had entered with Connecticut Green Bank would not be substantially affected.
“While we want to continue to look at solar for all these buildings and become as efficient as possible, they are willing to work with us on a go-forward basis,” Dineen said. “It turns out they also have some challenges with supply chain issues with the Green Bank and with solar equipment. So it’s all kind of playing out to our favor.”
Farmington High School project millions of dollars over budget
Don Stacom
Rising construction costs and quickly climbing interest rates have pushed the Farmington High School construction project about $18 million over budget, and town voters will get to decide next month how to deal with that.
School and municipal officials are asking voters next month to authorize spending another $9.7 million on the project, but are assuring that it won’t come from local taxpayers.
The state government this summer authorized an unexpectedly high level of aid for the project, so a “yes” vote on the Dec. 8 referendum would not spike a tax increase, town leaders said.
“The total cost will increase, but that won’t be on the shoulders of the community,” Town Council Chairman C.J. Thomas said Thursday.
To go beyond the $136 million school construction project that voters approved last year, the town must get a “yes” vote on the referendum, Thomas said.
That would allow it to apply the $14 million in additional state aid to cover the overruns and slightly reduce the town’s share of the overall expense.
A panel overseeing the project blamed higher interest rates, supply chain disruptions and fast-rising construction costs for the overruns.
Similar troubles have struck public and private building projects, especially during the second half of this year. Southington last month dealt with a roughly $1.5 million overrun in its $17 million library construction by downsizing the new building; instead of being 30,000 square feet, it will measure 24,000 square feet.
Farmington leaders cautioned against that approach with the high school, saying planners have already shaved more than $9 million in costs from the original plan. Those expenses won’t be restored, they said.
Planners also temporarily agreed to millions of dollars in additional reductions, such using plasterboard instead of concrete masonry walls, substituting linoleum for tile floors, and skipping construction of new tennis courts and a new ballfield. Those expenses could be restored now because of the new state aid.
Even after all of those cutbacks, actual price quotes last month turned out to be 5 percent higher than what was projected in 2021. The town received more than 120 bids for materials, electrical work, carpentry, plumbing and other components.
The full budget for all construction labor and materials had been set at $115.6 million, but the lowest bids in October totaled $121.5 million, according to Lorel Purcell of O&G Industries, the town’s construction manager.
“With some of the bid packages, we only received single bids —they over our estimates,” she told the town council last week. “The intent is to go out and rebid, and hopefully it will go down a little bit.”
Council members said it will be essential for voters to understand that the unexpected state aid will mean there isn’t a cost for Farmington’s budget.
“That’s a really hard thing to communicate as we go forward,” council member Rafeena Bacchus Lee said. “The net municipal cost to the town will actually decrease because we have access to the $14 million.”
Project planners said the $14 million will be used to cover the new overruns and restore the tennis courts, ballfield and other reductions that the panel had temporarily agreed to.
Westview Terrace resident Tim Kelly said the building committee’s work so far hasn’t been good enough.
“The basic job of any building committee is to deliver the finished project on time and under budget — $10 million over budget is a huge miss,” Kelly told the council. “I think we can expect in 18 to 20 months, when the new building is 70 percent complete, to receive another $10 million emergency funding request. "
Kelly suggested the town could hold a referendum requesting $20 million so it could cover future contingencies, or else go back to the previously rejected idea of renovating the current high school instead of building a new one.
The council, however, agreed that the project is basically on track and agreed to schedule a referendum for Dec. 8. Thomas said the town will distribute information to voters well before then.
As Hartford’s lawyers try to fend off a legal challenge from a developer sacked from the construction of Dunkin’ Donuts Park and surrounding apartment blocks, a subsequent developer has finished one apartment building and is seeking local approvals for the next should the city prevail in court.
The 6,000-plus seat Dunkin’ Donuts Park was completed in 2017, following a construction project that was delayed by a year and which saw costs jump from an initial $56 million budget to $71 million.
The city blamed Middletown-based Centerplan Cos., terminating it as both the developer of the partially complete stadium and revoking the right of an affiliated limited liability company to build apartments on nearby city-controlled lots.
The city worked with Centerplan’s insurer to complete the stadium and picked Stamford-based RMS Cos. to build on the lots. The company recently finished a 270-apartment building just south of the stadium, across Trumbull Street.
RMS CEO Randy Salvatore had planned to roll right into construction of a second development – a 522-spot parking facility attached to a structure with 528 apartments -- on a site just southwest of the stadium, across Main Street.
That effort has been stymied by developments in Centerplan’s ongoing appeal of its termination. The appeal was granted new life in May, when the Connecticut Supreme Court ordered a new trial of Centerplan’s appeal. Earlier, a Superior Court jury had sided with the city, ordering Centerplan and affiliated DoNo Hartford LLC to pay $335,000 in damages.
Centerplan, in July, filed an amended complaint seeking to have RMS Cos. named as a co-defendant and asserting its right, and ability, to build on the lots around Dunkin’ Donuts Park. Centerplan also asked for an injunction against additional construction.
Centerplan argues there were problems with the stadium design that was drawn up during a period in which the developer did not have control over the project architect. The company’s attorney, Louis Pepe of McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney & Carpenter LLP, asserts the city falsely accused the company of a default to shift responsibility for cost overruns it could not afford.
Centerplan’s suit also blames the city for failing to provide contractually required notice of default and says the city did not give Centerplan an opportunity to cure alleged deficiencies.
The city has filed a motion to dismiss the portion of the lawsuit in which Centerplan asserts continued rights to develop city-owned properties. The next hearing in the lawsuit is scheduled for Dec. 5.
Meantime, Salvatore has filed a Planning and Zoning application with the city, seeking zoning relief needed to pursue construction of a 522-space parking garage and a 528-unit apartment building on roughly 5 vacant acres surrounded by Main Street, Trumbull Street, Chapel Street North and Pleasant Street. The development would include about 20,932 square feet of amenities, 4,496 square feet of retail, three courtyards and a rooftop terrace, according to his application.
The application seeks to combine a dozen lots into a single development lot. He is also asking for zoning relief that would allow first-floor apartments along Chapel Street North and Pleasant Street; as well as the ability to put the entrance to the garage along Main Street.
Salvatore’s requests were scheduled to go before the Planning and Zoning Commission Tuesday night, but the item was postponed to December, giving RMS more time to submit final drawings.
Salvatore said there is no rush, as RMS needs to wait for a court answer before moving ahead. Salvatore said he hopes to proceed with construction early next year, but it would be impossible to be certain of the timing of a court resolution.
“While in the meantime I wanted to get all of the (local) approvals done, so we are ready to go,” Salvatore said. “We need the approvals, and we need the case to resolve, so we are working on parallel tracks.”
Despite OSHA’s efforts, construction’s death rate hasn’t budged in 10 years
Zachary Phillips , Julia Himmel and Noelle Knox
The death toll in construction hasn’t changed in the past decade, raising important questions about the effectiveness of OSHA and what it would take to save more lives, according to an analysis by Construction Dive.
Workers continue to die at the same rate — 10 out of every 100,000 workers didn’t come home between 2011 and 2020 — highlighting weak enforcement, meager inspections and fines, and the opioid epidemic. Funerals totaled 1,008 in 2020, the most recent data available. And three in five workers who perished consistently died from the same causes, known as the “Fatal Four.”
Falls and electrocutions still account for the most fatalities, along with accidents called “struck-bys” and “caught-in/betweens,” which cover a wide range of dangers, such as when a vehicle, piece of machinery or material strikes or traps a worker.
OSHA told Construction Dive it focuses much of its efforts in construction on education around the Fatal Four. But despite the agency’s best efforts the share of workers dying from those well-known hazards remained stagnant from 2011 to 2020 while the workforce grew 31%.
The Fatal Four still account for same portion of worker deaths
For OSHA to become a feared enforcer, experts say the agency would need to increase inspections exponentially, enforce fines more strictly, wield more tools at its disposal and expand preventative consultations. All of those factors require more money and staff.
With last year’s staff levels, for example, it would have taken inspectors 236 years to visit every workplace in the U.S., according to union group AFL-CIO’s Death on the Job report. Fines would need to rise above the cost of doing business and find their targets, especially among small contractors, which account for about 90% of the industry and often fly under the radar.
OSHA would also need a broader mandate. Voluntary programs — such as jobsite consultations — would need to encompass more than the builders who go beyond the bare minimum. In addition, workers’ compensation laws in some states might need to change to address the strong link between fatalities and the wait time for wage replacement.
OSHA targets high-risk hazards with its limited resources. The agency is on a hiring spree, after 12 years of steady staff reductions. And health and safety regulations were not designed to help save the increasing number of construction workers who die on the job from drug overdose and suicide.
The rate of fatal injuries in construction is virtually unchanged
Despite OSHA’s efforts, the agency still faces a Hydra of obstacles.
Many contractors with multiple serious fines for incidents, injuries or deaths play “catch me if you can,” by dodging fines and keeping their costs low, said Jay Bradshaw, executive officer of Nor Cal Carpenters Union, which represents 37,000 workers across 22 affiliated unions.
“That’s a repeat offender — that clearly part of their business model is that they just bake in” the cost of fines, he said.
Even when they get caught, the price tags for violations are too low to deter bad actors. The average federal OSHA penalty for a serious breach was $4,460 last year, the AFL-CIO report found. The median penalty for death on a jobsite was $9,753 — roughly the cost of 20,000 board feet of lumber.
Complicated and hazardous work led to the majority of deaths on commercial jobsites. In 2020, almost a quarter of workers who died were in residential construction or specialty contractors who worked on residential projects.
Cost versus safety
Competition, inflation and supply-chain snags are all contributing to a race to the bottom. The lower the bid, the higher the chance of winning. When developers don’t demand contractors live up to certain safety standards, they allow offenders to undercut other contractors, said Ken Simonson, chief economist for Associated General Contractors of America.
Carol Sigmond, partner at national law firm Greenspoon Marder, who represents many subcontractors, confirmed, “For the contractors who periodically close up and re-open, the fines are just a cost of doing business.”
Worse, OSHA often fails even to collect its fines. Employers across all industries skirted $100 million in fines between fiscal years 2018 and 2020, according to a Bloomberg Law investigation. One in five employers don’t pay up, Bloomberg found. That meant OSHA wrote off about 14% of the fines from that period, according to data OSHA shared with Construction Dive via email.
The agency has worked a little with the U.S. Department of Justice to improve its debt collection.
“We are planning some inroads that, although they may be small, we’re still trying,” said Scott Ketcham, director of OSHA’s directorate of construction. He emphasized that OSHA is an enforcement agency, not punitive.
OSHA is striving to reverse years of staff reductions — down 21% for federal and state inspectors from 2011 — and is now hiring the most in years, Ketcham said. The agency needs more people and more money to improve worker protections, he said.
Carrot and stick
Under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 — which formed OSHA — a safe workplace is the employer’s responsibility, but the agency sets the bar and enforces the rules.
The agency doesn’t get to dictate its own budget and scope. OSHA lost $12.5 million to sequestration in 2013, for example, then saw its budget increase by $24 million in 2020. In fiscal year 2022 OSHA requested 155 new federal inspectors. Congress funded salaries for 85, according to Bloomberg.
But it’s not the job of these inspectors to decide who can stay in business, said Kevin Cannon, senior director of safety and health services for AGC. They offer employers a carrot in terms of education of hazards, and a stick in terms of penalties.
“Our goal is to protect workers and make sure that employers are protecting their workers as well,” OSHA’s Ketcham said.
He also pointed out that jobsite deaths from overdoses and suicides, just 3% in 2011, now account for one in 10, and both causes fall outside OSHA’s standards for a safe workplace.
Fines with no teeth
At first glance it’s surprising: There is no correlation between higher average fines and lower death rates, according to John Mendeloff, professor at the graduate school of public and international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.
The unpleasant truth is that fines aren’t high enough to curb risky decisions.
“We’re talking about, for example, the difference between an average penalty of $1,000 versus say $2,000,” he said. That kind of gap doesn’t seem to make a difference. “Now that doesn’t mean, for example, that if you get a $20,000 or $50,000 penalty, that it doesn’t have an effect. But those are pretty rare.”
Under the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act of 2015, OSHA fines rise with inflation every Jan. 15. Prior to that, penalties hadn’t increased since 1990. New legislation would be needed to make fines really bite.
OSHA could not quantify how often penalties are contested, reduced or removed.
However, in September, OSHA expanded the Severe Violator Enforcement Program (SVEP) — designed to reform repeat offenders with serious violations — to include more employers and standards. Nevertheless, OSHA doesn’t have concrete data for the number of active employers in SVEP, as the small employers can easily vanish.
Those small businesses can more easily close down and pop up under a new name to avoid penalties. That’s harder for large builders to do.
Small builders fly below the radar
For small builders, sometimes the owner is hammering nails alongside their six or seven employees. The owner may wear the hats of HR, payroll and safety director, said Chris Cain, executive director for the Center for Construction Research and Training, known as CPWR.
The vast majority of U.S. contractors are small businesses with fewer than 20 workers, Cannon said. And hazards more often go unnoticed or uninspected on small jobsites.
“The million-dollar question is how do you get in touch with those folks?” Cannon said.
Employers don’t fear the whip crack enough, said MK Fletcher, safety and health specialist for AFL-CIO.
“What it comes down to is employers need to know that OSHA could show up to their work site and could cite them and hold them accountable,” Fletcher said. “And those penalties need to be meaningful.”
Carpenter’s union executive Bradshaw said in some extreme cases threats of criminal charges over potential manslaughter or criminal negligence could sharpen OSHA’s enforcement teeth.
Few criminal referrals
OSHA has always had the power to recommend criminal charges for egregious negligence. But since 1970, only 115 worker deaths have been criminally prosecuted, according to the AFL-CIO’s report.
A major reason for that in construction is ignorance. Most police departments and prosecutors don’t have the construction knowledge to distinguish between gross negligence and an accident, said Sigmond, the lawyer. Even then, it’s the district attorney’s decision to prosecute in an industry known for hazards.
A New York state bill that could change that has landed on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk. Named after deceased worker Carlos Moncayo, the bill would raise minimum corporate fines to $300,000 for misdemeanors and $500,000 for felonies. The state’s current limit is $10,000.
The legislation is unique, but Sigmond, who’s based in New York, said it would incentivize prosecutors to go after cases, or to make an example out of a scofflaw employer.
Inspections: not enough
OSHA’s Ketcham described the daunting challenge of visiting the roughly 9 million U.S. worksites with 800 or so federal compliance officers as “a big task.”
However, the more compelling question is do jobsite visits make a difference? The potential answer is yes, but state and federal OSHAs would have to hire over 1,000 more staff to move the needle, according to a Construction Dive analysis.
OSHA’s inspections have dropped gradually since 2009 and were 60% lower for the construction industry in 2020. That decline hardly made a difference in the fatality rate.
“If you increased inspections by 60%, you get about a 5% decrease in fatalities in construction,” the University of Pittsburgh’s Mendeloff said. Based on his math, that increase in inspections in 2020 could have saved 50 construction workers’ lives.
OSHA visiting one of a contractor’s many jobsites likely doesn’t influence its safety protocol. Even with the threat of citation, builders will tell you it’s not the low odds of an inspection that encourages best practices.
“It’s not the sort of lottery-winning-esque risk of an OSHA inspector coming to your jobsite and writing you a fine that motivates you to be safe,” said Brian Turmail, vice president of public affairs and strategic initiatives for AGC. “You’re worried about what your workers’ comp rate is going to be. Your ability to insure your work.”
Helping those who help themselves
For most big contractors, OSHA is a resource, setting baseline standards. And data show they usually take that responsibility seriously.
Turmail stressed that maintaining a safe jobsite is not just the ethical thing to do, it’s good business. Lower insurance and workers’ compensation premiums help contractors bid lower.
General contractors upholding the highest standards for themselves and their subcontractors can help weed out those with dangerous track records.
“Fortunately bad actors leave trails. There’s evidence out there. All you’ve got to do is ask them for it,” said Greg Sizemore, vice president of health safety, environment, and workforce development at Associated Builders and Contractors.
Some say rule-breakers are easy to spot, but others say there’s only so much a general contractor can do to ensure all employers on the job are up to snuff.
Sizemore also emphasized planning ahead of a project to identify hazards before construction begins. OSHA offers employer-requested consultations before bulldozers break ground. Federal OSHA relies heavily on those consultations to highlight dangers and prevent accidents.
State versus federal muscle
Federal OSHA is only half of the enforcement picture.
Twenty-nine states and territories have their own OSHA programs that enforce safety standards as strict or stricter than federal rules.
23 states and territories have OSHA-approved state plans
Hover for the number of inspections and % with violations
Some states “send out letters to firms with high losses based, say, on their workers’ comp data. And they’ll tell them, ‘You can either request a consultation or get an inspection,’” Mendeloff said.
His research found workers’ comp is tied most closely to fatality rates. States that exempt small contractors from carrying workers’ comp insurance post higher fatality rates, especially at firms with fewer than 10 employees.
Additionally, in states with their own OSHA programs, fatalities have a stronger association with inspections and consultations. By contrast, in states that let federal OSHA enforce, fatalities align closely to workers’ comp laws. For example, states with seven-day waiting periods before wage replacement have higher fatality rates than states with three-day waits, Mendeloff found.
That implies workers who don’t have the option to get paid while recovering from an injury wait longer without pay or go back to work injured. Those states likely have worse safety records overall, Mendeloff found.
Workers’ compensation laws are outside of OSHA’s purview, but Mendeloff stressed the two places he’d look to improve safety would be lowering workers’ comp wait times and expanding consultation offerings.
Working through the pain
Construction has also succumbed to the opioid epidemic. In 2020, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recorded 77 onsite overdoses, compared to just 7 in 2011.
The increased use of opioid painkillers could be linked to injuries, but when it comes to jobsite accidents versus the general epidemic abuse, it’s hard to parse the numbers.
Mendeloff’s research suggests many states fail to properly capture the number of onsite injuries.
The lack of confidence in that statistic is renowned. Fatalities are final. Injuries can go undetected, especially when workers fight through the pain to avoid missing a day’s wages waiting for workers’ comp, Mendeloff said.
In 2008, the U.S. House or Representatives noted the country had trouble finding the exact number of reported injuries and illnesses across industries. BLS has considered changes, such as turning to employees to report those numbers. Still, the BLS has not made a decision on how to update injury reporting.
Another worrying trend is the increase in workers who take their own lives. In 2020, the Center for Disease Control found construction workers had the second-highest suicide rate of all industries, at 45 per 100,000; 27 more than the national average.
All deaths are preventable
Construction is full of hazardous jobs: working from heights, with heavy machinery, on major roadways, in trenches and with dangerous substances.
Nonetheless, both OSHA and major construction groups maintain that all jobsite deaths are preventable.
“Why is it in my 40-plus years being in construction, if there’s ever an incident, there’s always something that wasn’t done correctly?” said Sizemore, who, in addition to his role at ABC, also sits on OSHA’s construction advisory committee.
Asked why the rate of incidents hasn’t gone down, he said, “Maybe because the responsibility stops at the worker and doesn’t go all the way up to the top of that organization.”
When it doesn’t go to the top, OSHA’s safety net has holes too big to catch everyone.