Alamance County’s commissioners have agreed to depart from their traditional method for managing construction projects as they begin to look forward to the proposed expansion of the Judge J.B. Allen, Jr. Court House in Graham.
During a regularly-scheduled meeting on Monday, the commissioners voted 4-to-1 to entrust this $37 million project to a “construction manager at risk” in order to avoid some of the potential pitfalls that have menaced the county’s traditional approach to construction.
The commissioners had previously declined to use a construction manager at risk for the multimillion-dollar overhaul of a former industrial building in Burlington that’s slated to become the county’s new 9-1-1 center. In this case, however, a majority of the board’s members felt that the potential cost of a construction manager would be worth the corresponding reduction in risk to the county in the event that the courthouse expansion goes sideways.
Most of the commissioners were also comforted by the input they heard from Andrew Cruickshank with CRA Architects, which has handled the designs for the courthouse expansion since the county began to tinker with this project in 2018. Cruickshank told the county’s governing board that he’s quite confident they’ll be able to find a competent contractor to serve as the construction manager for this venture.
“As far as the fee goes,” he added, “it’s something that you negotiate [as part of] the guaranteed maximum price…The basic feeling about this in the industry is that you’re probably paying a slight premium with CMR. But you’re also transferring the risk…So if those bids come in too high, it’s all on the contractor.”
The only opposition to this proposed model came from commissioner Pam Thompson, who pointed out that she has previously objected to the reduced scope of the courthouse expansion from the $99 million proposal that was originally pitched to the commissioners in 2022.
“I think when we’re spending this kind of money, we need to put it on the [ballot as a bond package] like we did with the education bonds,” she added to explain her dissent from the board’s 4-to-1 vote.
“I think when we’re spending this kind of money, we need to put it on the [ballot as a bond package] like we did with the education bonds.”
– County commissioner Pam Thompson
Cruickshank proceeded to inform the commissioners that, with a construction model in place, they’ll be able to give his firm the go-ahead to work up some detailed designs, which may take as long as 12 months to complete. The county could then embark on the two-month bid process to select a contractor, which would need about 18 months or so to put the whole project to bed.
