Photo: Skanska USA named construction manager of the new high school.
A familiar face will construct the new Belmont High School as Skanska USA was selected as the project’s Construction Manager by a subcommittee of the Belmont High School Building Committee on Tuesday, May 8.
Subcommittee Chair Patricia Brusch told the Belmontonian the multinational construction and development company headquartered in Sweden with an office in Boston will be officially on board the project “very quickly. Just a matter of days.”
Skanska is no stranger to Belmont having managed the construction of the 84,000 square-foot Wellington Elementary School on Orchard Street between 2010 to 2011.
Besides upfront payments, Skanska will receive a two percent of the total cost of the project as its fee, said Brusch.
Brusch said the three candidate firms – Skanska, Suffolk Construction, and Gilbane Building Co. – interviewed on Monday, May 7, were close in the subcommittee’s evaluation and in the bids submitted. But the subcommittee members ranked Skanska first in each category, said Brusch, who indicated the firm’s positive experience building the Wellington was likely the edge that won it the job.
“Each [firm] said they would do what was asked of them, but we knew that Skanska actually did it,” said Brusch, who recalled one example where the firm shut down operations at the Wellington whenever a funeral or memorial service took place at nearly by St. Joseph’s Church without being asked.
With Skanska’s selection, the major players to build the estimated $290 million project has now been assembled with Skanska joining Daedalus Projects of Boston as Project Manager and Boston’s Perkins+Will as architect/designer.
That looks awful and I’m sure the cantilever construction adds to the cost tremendously. How about a school that actually looks like a school?