School renovations may use local labor

General contractors will be encouraged to look to the valley for subcontractors

The RE1J school district will be doling out $43 million to expand and renovate six of its schools over the next 18 months, and contractors around the Gunnison Valley are hoping to cash in and keep some of that money close to home.

“Everybody wants to see local companies doing the work on the school since we all helped get the bond passed. I’m looking at it as an opportunity. If local contractors don’t end up working, there will be a lot of disappointment,” says Skye Houseman, owner of Crested Butte Electrical Inc. “All we’re asking for is a shot at doing the work.”
According to Roy Blythe, principal and owner of the Blythe Group, which is managing the district’s projects, the Gunnison Valley School is a $1.4 million project open to construction bids independently of the other projects and is being positioned for local contractors.
“We’ve talked about [GVS] being a bid project independent of the others and let the local contractors have the ability to step up. If they thought they could get a lot of donated labor or donated materials for the Valley School, as we were told, then that should make them low bidder,” says Blythe.
The use of local contractors for parts of the construction of the other four valley schools, which has been repeatedly suggested by the school board, will also be part of the conversation Blythe has with the general contractors overseeing each site.
“We’ll be asking the general contractor to go to the local contractor’s group and look for local subcontractors—electricians, plumbers, dry wallers—to do the work,” says Blythe. “There is generally also a three-bid minimum on each trade for general contractors, so that opens the door for local guys also.”
But since the cost of each of the district’s projects exceeds $1 million—two exceed $20 million—some local contractors doubt if there are enough companies in the valley that have the number of employees or the bonding capacity to take on the contracts.
One electrical contractor, whose company consists of himself and an apprentice, said that if he were asked to bid, he could get other independent contractors to join together and build a workforce large enough to handle the project.
“A lot of these contractors specifically do larger projects and I don’t know how many local contractors are big enough to take on some of these schools,” he says. “Things are looking pretty ugly and I wouldn’t mind taking anything right about now. But the only people calling are people looking for work.”
Even if a local contractor doesn’t have the bonding capacity to take on a job of the size being offered by the district, a larger company could take the contract and hire local contractors to do parts of the job, says Blythe.
One Gunnison contractor is among the seven general contractors being interviewed by the district selection committee, which is comprised of Blythe and another member of his team and several district employees, on Tuesday, December 16. The others are based in Grand Junction, Colorado Springs and Denver.
Those seven were chosen from 23 general contractors who responded to the district’s request for bids. During the interview, they will take a tour of the school sites and eventually discuss which projects they would like to work on, or how many, and ways they will manage the projects.
After checking references and bonding capacity, Blythe is also requiring that the finalists bring their entire team of managers with them to the interview to be assessed for their competence and ability.
Ethan Gibson, an owner representative of the Blythe Group who is sitting on the selection committee, says, “We’ll ask how they’re planning on getting local contractors and local suppliers involved and what their experience has been working in this area. A lot of these contractors have worked in Gunnison County before.”
Once the committee awards contracts for each project over the next couple of weeks, the winners will start assembling their teams of sub contractors, which the Blythe Group will supervise, but not be directly involved in.
For Ron Chlipala, owner of Timberline Mechanical, the selection of the subcontractors is the opening he’s waiting for and he hopes the big general contractors being brought on for the school expansion and renovation projects will be willing to work with local contractors.
“You know, a lot of these large contracting firms bring subcontractors with them who they know. But anything I can do for that school, I’ll do. I felt like I helped pass the bond issue so I feel strongly about making sure local people get some of that money,” says Chlipala. “Bidding some of those projects is definitely something we’ll be doing.”