School board keeping eye on contractor

Thu, May 15, 2008

By HANK ROWLAND

The Brunswick News

The Facility Group will have someone looking over its shoulder during construction of the Golden Isles Career Center.

Members of the Glynn County Board of Education have agreed to pay Gude Management of Atlanta $226,000 annually to keep an eye on the $19.4 million construction project.

Millard Allen, chair of the board's finance committee, which made the recommendation to the full board during its regular meeting Tuesday, considers it insurance.

"With all the noise going on about The Facilities Group, it just seemed to be the prudent thing for us to do," Allen said Wednesday.

Questions about The Facility Group arose after it was revealed that the company was not required to a post a performance bond when awarded the contract to oversee construction of the technical school by the Brunswick and Glynn County Development Authority. The authority and the school board are partners in the project with Glynn County.

The lack of a performance bond became an issue following the indictment of The Facility Group and three of its top executives by a federal grand jury in Mississippi in February. Two of the three officers have since resigned to prepare their defenses.

The Facility Group, based in Smyrna, also is being sued by the Mississippi State Attorney General's Office for $9 million the state contends the firm owes subcontractors on an economic development project.

Allen said the development authority and county were aware that the school board planned to vote to contract for an additional layer of professional oversight.

"They essentially knew what we were doing," he said.

He said the contract with the Gude Management, which calls for oversight four days a week, is such that it can be adjusted down or eliminated at any time. The company also is managing the construction of new middle schools in Glynn County.

"Basically, what we did was issue a change order," Allen said. "We asked them to come in and extend their oversight to the charter school just to make sure we're getting what we're paying for."

Golden Isles Career Academy is being built on Glynco Parkway in the Brunswick-McBride Industrial Park with school board, county and state funds. It is scheduled to open in spring 2009.

"So far, they are essentially on track," Allen said. "We just thought with all this other stuff going on it would be prudent to have an extra set of eyes."

H.W. Mattingly, an executive vice president with The Facility Group, said in an e-mail sent Wednesday to The News that the development authority carefully monitors money dedicated to work on the career academy.

"We request no prepayments," Mattingly said. "Requests for fees are made with respect to the percentage of overall completion.

"This project is driven by checks and balances on the part of all the partners. Just recently, to provide one more layer of assurance to all those involved in the project, we decided to have the Development Authority review and issue all payments to all parties to the project so that the funds were completely controlled by the owner."

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