The Contract Manager at Risk Program authorized by the Kansas Legislature is being employed on the new Junction City High School project.

David Wild, Chief Operations Officer for USD 475, said the program provides the flexibility to allow bid extensions, split contract awards and other alternatives to the sealed or closed bid process. CMAR is being used to improve pricing for the construction of the new school.

“The pricing is now in. We have good solid competitive pricing on the project and this is the point of the CMAR process where we work through ok, what is it exactly that we really want, what are we willing to pay for, and we will begin to manage towards the control budget that we had established for the high school project.”

During initial proposal reviews the contractor, Hutton Construction, was able to reduce the overall pricing by more than three percent within the first two days and expects more reductions to come.