The St. Mary’s County Board of Education on Thursday approved a more than $1 million contract for the design of renovation of Spring Ridge Middle School (SRMS) to the same firm that designed the renovation of Leonardtown Middle School (LMS). The two schools were originally built in the 1970’s to the same design.

The award was made to Wheeler Goodman Masek (WGM) of Annapolis and is being made possible by the county commissioners’ funding $250,000 before the end of the fiscal year and advancing $10 million in the Capital Improvement Plan for FY ’14 as the county’s share of the project.

The project has been accelerated due to the recent fire at the school that destroyed five classrooms. Those classrooms will be repaired in time for the school opening in August. Insurance monies will pay for that. According to Deputy Superintendent Brad Clements, “The goal of completing the renovation as soon as possible requires that the design schedule be compressed from a normal 14-month schedule to eight months.”

Clements said the WGM did a good job with the Leonardtown M.S. design. A synopsis presented to the board said, “The scope of the renovation is similar to the scope for LMS, although the design solutions may be different. During the final design phase, the roofing consultant will assess the condition of the existing roof at SRMS, which is 18 years old, and provide a recommendation whether the existing roof should be replaced. The other program element unique to SRMS is the STEM Program. Currently one of the grades for STEM is housed in a modular unit. The project for SRMS includes a small addition to consolidate all of the STEM classes within the school.”

According to the report the current design-to-budget for the renovation project is $15.8 million. The total fee for the design of $1,042,161 is 6.6 percent of the design-to-budget which is below the typical 8-10 percent, Clements said. The fee for Leonardtown Middle School was 8.5 percent of the construction contract.

Board staff recommended the award based on the “experience, expertise and capacities” of WGM. The school board unanimously approved the award.