COD over budget on tech education building

When College of DuPage trustees approved plans for a new Technology Education Center, the price tag already was nearly $6 million bigger than anticipated.

Now it appears that even the $48.7 million they set aside might not be enough.

Midway through the process of hiring contractors, officials say the project is on pace to cost nearly $50.8 million.

With overall spending $2.1 million over budget, trustees must either to find the additional dollars or cut costs.

That could mean another round of "value engineering," or analyzing which items can be removed from the building plans, said Tom Ryan, COD vice president of administrative affairs.

The board is expected to consider trimming features from the building in November.

Trustees have said they would consider supplementing the TEC budget with $1.5 million in reserve cash from the school's nearly $300 million facility master plan.

They agreed to discuss that at the time because they were concerned about keeping more costly features in the building to maintain its integrity and about keeping the construction on schedule.

But even if they decide to dip into the facility plan's reserves, the college still would have to shave $600,000 in building features to stay within budget, Ryan said.

Complicating matters further is that many of the contractors already have been hired. So the number of remaining projects from which the school can cull that savings continues to diminish.

In February 2006, construction on the new building was listed at an estimated $31.5 million with a total projected cost of $42.3 million, according to documents posted on COD's Web site.

That April, trustees agreed to increase the project price by about $5.8 million rather than eliminate elements they determined were key to the new facility's purpose.

Though architects at the time explained the cost jump publicly as being from $28.9 million to $34.7 million, they failed to include site work and infrastructure costs. They've always been in the budget - they just inexplicably weren't included in the presentation, Ryan explained.

When contractors started bidding on the job this past summer, The Rise Group - the company overseeing the facility plan - notified trustees that the project was another $2.9 million over budget.

Trustees again were presented with scaled back designs to shave expenses based on the costs.

But the board said the resulting redesign would delay the schedule. Items were only to be cut if they didn't affect the timeline and the "integrity" of the building.

"It is the intent of the project team to work with selected subcontractors to reduce the cost of the work, if that can be accomplished without significant design or schedule impacts," said Jim Koolish, program manager with The Rise Group.