With January 2022 set as the target date for staff and students to move into the new Minot Avenue elementary school, the project remains under budget and ahead of schedule.

Project Manager Chad Crittenden had only good news to share with School Committee members during a March 11 meeting. 

“At this point in the project, we’re approaching the 70 percent completion milestone,” he said. 

Financially, things are also smooth sailing, according to Crittenden. 

“We have 82 percent of the project’s contingency left untouched, so we’re in really really good shape there,” he said. 

Contractually, Crittenden said the school was scheduled to be substantially completed by mid-October 2021. At that point, six to eight weeks will be needed to move furnishings and technology into the building, before things can be moved over from the John W. Decas Elementary School.

He reported no problems with progress on the school at the moment — just the opposite, in fact.

“On the construction end, we’re tracking around six weeks ahead of schedule,” Crittenden said. “So substantial completion would occur the first week of September.”

Committee member Kevin Brogioli asked if that meant it might be possible to move staff and students into the new building earlier than January 2022.

“I think the challenge is finding that period to move everything out of the existing buildings and into the new building,” Crittenden said. “It’s not something that happens overnight. So we could potentially shoot for one of the earlier breaks.” 

Crittenden said it wasn’t completely out of the question, but it would be a challenge. 

“It’s very very challenging to move an entire, in this case, two buildings into that one building and get the spaces set up,” he said.

Mark Adrean, one of the project leads from PMA Consultants, shared a number of photos during the meeting that had been taken earlier in the day. 

Adrean highlighted recent additions to the building, including window glass, cabinets, countertops, ceiling lights and new flooring.

“To go from looking at the designs for so long to seeing the building, [...] every time I see it, it’s amazing,” said Committee Chair Joyce Bacchiocchi. She also thanked Adrean and Crittenden for facilitating monthly virtual tours of the school building.

Wareham residents can watch the most recent March 2 virtual tour of the new school building embedded in our gallery or on Facebook here: https://fb.watch/4e2DO7um3w