Windham town officials are raising concerns about large-scale cost underestimates in a municipal facilities master plan commissioned last year intended to help the town set budgetary priorities. Recent upward revisions of the figures could even derail planned projects within town.

The Sept. 5, 2014, draft of the Municipal Facilities and Space Needs Study and Master Plan, produced by the Portland-based engineering and planning firm SMRT, contains cost projections for a proposed public works facility and public library renovation project that are significantly lower than newer estimates delivered recently by other consulting firms.

While the SMRT master plan projected the new public works facility would cost $4.4 million, a new schematic design produced by Portland-based Allied Engineering projects a much heftier price tag of $7.62 million for the facility. The master plan also projected that a proposal to consolidate the public library’s circulation desks would cost $45,500, while a new estimate from Biddeford-based Oak Point Associates projects a cost of $184,165.

The Windham Town Council, which paid $32,000 for SMRT’s master plan last fall, has requested that SMRT principal David Mains, the lead author of the master plan, come to a council meeting to discuss the discrepancies. Town Council Chairman David Nadeau said he is concerned that the report has systematically underestimated project costs.

“We need to come up with some better figures,” Nadeau said. “If everything’s off, we need to have somebody figure out why and how do we rectify it. We thought it would have been a lot more reliable.”

Under Nadeau’s chairmanship, the council has placed a higher priority on setting long-term strategic planning priorities. The goal of the master plan, according to an introduction to the report, is to “provide the town of Windham with a guide in the budget process and assist in setting priorities for future capital projects.”

In an Aug. 12 email to Town Manager Tony Plante, Mains suggested that both the proposed public works and library projects had grown bigger in size since last fall.

“In the case of the public works and public library projects, comparing the scope of construction work estimated most recently by your consultants with the scope of work documented in the 2014 master plan reveals that each of those projects has expanded in scope resulting in the higher-than-estimated construction costs,” Mains said.

While the public works facility in the master plan was projected to be nearly 23,000 square feet, the proposal from Allied Engineering is 29,000 square feet. The square footage of the library project has increased roughly four-fold.

According to Library Director Jen Alvino, the SMRT master plan did not consider the full scale of construction needed to consolidate the library’s two consolidation desks. In particular, it did not consider what would happen in the area where one of the circulation desks is removed.

“SMRT was looking at just what it would cost to construct the space of the circulation area,” Alvino said. “What Oak Point Associates did was to look at the domino effect of removing the upstairs circulation area and what we would have to do to reconfigure that space.”

As far as the new public works facility, the town did not ask Mains to factor in the space needs of the Regional School Unit 14 transportation and maintenance staff, according to Plante. To Plante, that primarily explains the 21 percent increase in square footage for the proposed new facility. However, it does not explain the 42 percent increase in total cost, he said.

“If we’re talking about planning for a project that’s $4.5 million, and it’s $3 million more than that – that’s a big difference,” Plante said. “One question I’ve also asked of [Mains], though, is looking at the SMRT estimate and what we got back from Allied. If you break it down to a per-square-foot price, there’s a pretty big difference. So what I want to understand is, are there differences in the quality of construction that we’re talking about that may also contribute to the difference?”

In his Aug. 12 email to Plante, Mains also said that inflation likely played a role in the cost discrepancies.

“We have seen as much as 20 percent increase in material costs over the past 12 months on a number of projects delayed or picked up after preliminary budgets were established,” he said. “Budgets for the remaining projects identified in the master plan should be updated prior to proceeding to account for any change in scope and for inflation.”

According to the national Construction Cost Index maintained by the Engineering News-Record, material commodity costs have increased 1.7 percent in the past 12 months, while general construction costs have increased 2.1 percent.

In a phone interview, Mains said that the difference in scope could explain the discrepancy.

“It’s not as simple a situation of just one number being right and one number being wrong,” Mains said. “It’s got a lot to do with what scope is included in both the studies. The concept that both numbers are probably right – with some understanding and discussion – is a plausible scenario.”

Despite the cost discrepancies, Plante said the council is still “very interested” in pursuing the public works facility project. According to Plante, the council had planned to use $45,000 from the library’s Annie Akers Bremon Fund to finance the circulation desk consolidation. With the cost now running nearly four times as high, Alvino is applying for grant money to help fund the project, he said.

“I think that’s what made it so appealing. It’s like, ‘Yeah here’s something we can do we, can do it right now,” Plante said. “I think they are certainly disappointed it turned out not to be as affordable as we thought.”

According to Nadeau, it is not clear whether the council will move forward with the library renovation now that the projected costs have increased.

“We don’t have $185,000,” he said. “I’m only one councilor at that point. We’re going to have to talk about it and we’re going to have to talk about where that falls in our priority of buildings.”