I am writing to address a couple of issues raised in your August 12 article about Raymond Design Associates’ (RDA) work on the Deerfield Elementary School roof project.
Our staff has worked successfully with cities and towns all across the state over the past 31 years, and our work has included scores of school roof replacement projects.
Over the past few summers, our school roof replacement projects have involved three schools for the Bridgewater-Raynham Regional School District, two in Ashland, one for the North Middlesex Regional School District, one in Hudson, one in Provincetown and two for the nearby City of Northampton that were completed last summer.
We enjoy performing this type of work, do it well and have received many enthusiastic referrals and recommendations.
Even though every municipality or school district comes at these projects from a slightly different perspective in terms of oversight and input, for the most part, the process is typically straightforward and the number of times we’re asked to attend meetings, or be on site, is fairly consistent from project to project.
As such, when we were asked to provide a fee proposal at the very outset of the Deerfield project, we projected the number of site visits based on past history. In the case of our contract with the Town of Deerfield and the Frontier Regional and Union 38 school districts, we agreed upon a fee that anticipated a total of 15 meetings and site visits from the start of design up through the end of construction. This was especially important given the distance between Deerfield and our office in Rockland.
A significant part of the re-roofing design process involves meeting and interacting with officials who, we know, are simply trying to look out for the best interests of the community they serve. In the case of this particular project, the degree of interaction with town officials and various stakeholders during our work significantly exceeded what we have experienced on past projects, most notably during the design stage.
There is no question, and the various town officials would likely attest, that the Town of Deerfield held this project under a magnifying glass from day one, and much to their credit, vetted and approved every possible detail and specification presented by our firm for review prior to bidding. The cost control demonstrated from day one by the entire project team is laudable, and this job is scheduled to be completed on time and significantly under its original budget.
However, this detailed oversight and review process required many unforeseen trips to attend meetings, present options and secure approvals.
So, with all due respect to the officials in Deerfield quoted in your article, their characterization of our requests for a simple contract amendment to cover additional site visits as “blackmail” is entirely inaccurate.
We simply asked the town for an adjustment in our contract sum based on the additional hours and visits that have been necessary to prosecute the project to everyone’s satisfaction, are in the project’s best interest and were not reasonably anticipated or reflected in our original fee.
What might be a reasonable assertion, and in hindsight we agree, is that Raymond Design Associates could have presented this contract amendment for approval sooner than it did. With that said, there was never a threat to quit nor a refusal to process the paperwork that would allow the town to receive funding from the state. We have no idea where those statements even came from.
Far from wasting the town’s time, Raymond Design Associates has been very accommodating in administering several changes to the previously-reviewed and approved specifications that have been requested by the town after the job was bid and throughout the construction process. We have worked very hard to keep any costs to an absolute minimum and have charged nothing for what might otherwise have been considered justifiable scope changes to our contract.
It also has to be said that the quoted figure of $20,000 in your newspaper article is entirely inaccurate. The contract amendment that we presented to the town simply provided a mechanism for us to invoice for any of the aforementioned meetings or site visits and only then on a per-visit basis as necessary. There is a cap of $10,400 (not $20,000) on our contract amendment, and should the project continue on its currently positive trajectory, it is unlikely that even this allowance will be fully used.
Over 31 years in the industry, our staff has built a reputation for completing projects in a professional and timely way and at the lowest possible cost. That has been, and continues to be, our objective for Deerfield. We thoroughly respect your town’s sense of community and its desire to have buildings that reflect this sense. In closing, we thank the Town of Deerfield for the opportunity to work on its behalf and know that the final completed project will be one that your town will be very proud of.
Gene S. Raymond Jr. is president of Raymond Design Associates Inc. in Rockland