Hempfield Area School District paid more than $2.4 million to departing firm Core Architects for work on its now-stalled $150 million high school renovation project, according to district business manager Paul Schott.

Core Architects resigned from the ambitious project last week by sending the district a letter, according to Ryan Pierce, the firm’s managing principal. The board accepted the resignation this week and is looking for a new architect for the project.

School board President Jerry Radebaugh emphasized that the board remains “fully committed to the project.”

“How the project looks going forward, we need the full team in place to see how that’s going to be, and what it’s going to look like,” he said. “Once we have that team in place, we’re going to reevaluate, and look at the project as a whole and see how we move forward.”

The renovation has been on hold since August, when the first bidding phase came in millions of dollars over budget. The interior of the high school building was expected to be gutted and renovated over the course of the next three years, leaving most of the exterior intact with some additions.

The district also has paid construction manager SitelogIQ around $228,000 since about the same date, Schott said, and $30,000 to owner’s rep McKinley Architecture and Engineering, hired in October.

Core Architects was hired in February 2022, in the early stages of the high school renovation project’s planning. The company and SitelogIQ previously worked on a yearlong feasibility study to look at Hempfield Area’s physical, educational and functional needs.

McKinley Architecture and Engineering was hired last year to help the district navigate the renovations and coordinate the parties involved. McKinley has been meeting with administrators and the board, along with SitelogIQ and Core Architects, over the past four months to coordinate next steps. The district extended the company’s contract Monday. It now will be paid $200 an hour and billed monthly for the work.

Last year, the district raised taxes by 2.3 mills, adding $51.81 to the annual bill for the owner of a property assessed at $22,525. At the time, board Vice President Scott Learn emphasized that the tax increase was not because of the high school renovation project.

The project ahead

Tony Bompiani, a former school board member who sat on the board throughout the early process of the construction project, confirmed that SitelogIQ was paid according to a fixed rate, while Core Architects was initially paid based on a percentage of the project cost before being switched to a fixed rate.

In his last year on the board, Bompiani was increasingly cautious in public meetings about the project’s scope and wanted to reassess the plans before bids were sought.

“My concern right now is, have we wasted all that money? That’s crazy,” he said. “I feel frustrated and I feel concerned right now because I was involved in the project from the beginning under a leadership role, being on the committee and being board president, and I tried to give my advice based on experience and tell people this is not going well because of the inflation. No one listened.”

Bompiani said he asked last year to temporarily pause the project before it went to bid, but the board decided against it.

“Now I see them hiring a second architect, spending money twice to get the job done,” he said.

Sean Doyle, director of operations with McKinley, said he believes a “large majority” of the project is attainable.

“I think we need to look at the whole program, but most of us were confident that we can still get there without a lot of compromise,” Doyle said.

Over the past four months, Doyle said McKinley has “really spent extensive time meeting with every party involved in the project and every facet,” including the buildings and grounds committee, administration and school board.

“The district does need to find an architect at this point,” Doyle said. “We are going to continue to work with the district and SitelogIQ to help with everything associated with the project, including finding a new architect.”

As for where the renovation is headed, Doyle said the high price tag unveiled in August highlighted that there were “issues in what was put out to bid.”

“It wasn’t in line with, at the time, what was able to be done,” he said. “I think right now, with a new architecture firm coming into the project, there is going to be a reassessment of the program as a whole. Our hope would be that this can advance, and we can get work under construction as soon as possible.”

Scope of issues

High school construction projects such as Hempfield’s can be especially complex, said Dan Engen, president of Draw Collective. His architecture firm worked with Franklin Regional on its school renovation and building project that ended in 2021, and he has worked with public schools across Pennsylvania for 32 years.

Schools across the country that built in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s now need major renovations, Engen said. Hempfield Area High School was built in 1956 and renovated in 1966, 1978, 1988 and 2006.

“For districts, it’s a real balancing act,” Engen said. “The cost of a full renovation of an existing building is really significant.”

Districts will often repair sections of a school at a time, but the portions that are left for future repairs continue to degrade, and those costs can add up, he said.

What overall is a busy environment for building projects, along with the challenge of finding workers and companies that specialize in K-12 construction, has made finding labor more competitive, he added.

“It’s a significant local taxpayer impact,” Engen said. “But the longer you wait, the worse it gets from a cost point of view.”

James Gallagher, a principal with Resolution Management Consultants, a New Jersey-based construction consulting company that has worked on many school projects, said costs often rise if a project takes longer than expected. This isn’t exclusive to school construction, he said.

“You’ve got this confluence of issues that have arisen,” he said, citing supply-chain issues, material shortages and higher labor costs. “You’ve got this grouping of issues that are (making) the material prices and labor prices all rise on these projects.”

It was not immediately clear whether Hempfield will be able to use work that was done by Core Architects in the future. Construction manager SitelogIQ did not return calls and emails for comment, and Pierce declined to comment about the transition process.

Gallagher noted that if a new architect replaces a previous one, the new firm would have to get permission to use any drawings produced for a project.

“If they’re going to use any of the information that was already prepared, it would have to be with the knowledge and consent of the prior architect,” he said.

Radebaugh said determining whether any of Core Architects’ work can be reused will be a discussion to have “once the (new) team is in place.”

“I think we have a full understanding of how we got here, so moving forward we have a better picture in mind,” he said. “We know we’re going to have to reevaluate the project and go from there. But to really do that, we need the architect and the whole team involved.”

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