MFISD parts ways with bond project architects amid inaccurate cost estimates
Staff photo
Marble Falls Independent School District just terminated its contract with the architecture firm that helped develop several projects from its $172.2 million bond package due to concerns about poorly-estimated construction costs.
The MFISD School Board of Trustees voted unanimously during its regular meeting on Monday, Nov. 17 to part ways with Pfluger Architects. This decision follows a lengthy fact-finding investigation that commenced after it was found in October that Pfluger had severely underestimated the cost of building the new Marble Falls High School baseball field.
“By passing the (bond package), the community has put their faith and trust in us and to continue that trust, we had to make this move,” Superintendent Jeff Gasaway told DailyTrib.
MFISD is in negotiations with Huckabee Architects, the firm that handled many of the district’s 2018 bond projects, and they could be under contract by the time of the Board of Trustees’ next meeting on Dec. 15 according to Gasaway.
MFISD residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of the latest big bond package in May, approving funding for major campus upgrades to academics, athletics, infrastructure, transportation, and technology.
(Read more about the upgrades and why the bond package was on the ballot in the DailyTrib stories “Inside MFISD’s Props A and B: Long lines, no space, no time” and “Inside MFISD’s props C and D: ‘Are we OK being OK?’”)
Pfluger Architects was part of the pre-bond planning process and helped develop some of the bigger projects in the bond package like the new high school baseball field, a multi-purpose indoor sports facility, and the high school’s new career technology education center.
When the time came to go out for bid on construction of the school’s new baseball field in October, the district learned that the buildout would cost about $10 million, well above the $6.5 million that Pfluger estimated.
Concerns about other errors in cost estimates led to number-crunching on the district’s part and ultimately the decision to separate from Pfluger.
“We had a third party estimator come in,” Gasaway said. “With the multipurpose, it was still, from what we could tell, it wasn’t priced accurately.”
The multi-purpose facility was one of the larger items from the bond package with an estimated price tag of $26.05 million, but that figure is now in question.
This change in architecture firms will likely cause delays to the original timelines of these major projects. The baseball field was meant to be finished by February 2026 and the multi-purpose facility was meant to be ready by summer 2027, but now their due dates are uncertain.
“We’ll be asking (the new architects) to really help us understand what the timeline is going to be and to communicate what expectations we should have (on these projects),” Gasaway said.
The superintendent made it clear that the district was still committed to completing all of the bond projects despite the recent setback.
“Our intent is to deliver every bond project that we talked about to our community,” he said. “We feel like there are going to be some strategies that will be able to help us keep that plan. If we have concerns that we cannot deliver on that, we will share that with the community in the future.”
While some bond projects are delayed, others are not.
The Board of Trustees approved the purchase and installation of a new digital scoreboard at Mustang Stadium, which should be complete before the class of 2025-26 graduation. The board also approved the purchase of nine new buses and roof replacements on district property.