The School District of the City of Pontiac retained BEI Associates, Inc. to execute the second phase of their 1991 Bond Program. Services began with an initial assessment of all the District's school buildings to identify, estimate the cost of, and prioritize the most immediate needs. Those that could be accommodated within the funds previously approved by the District's voters were translated into the formal bond application documents, which were subsequently approved by the State's Department of Treasury. These documents formed the scope and budget for BEI's architectural and engineering services.
The work itself was issued in sixteen bid packages. The three major areas of work were flooring upgrades at 20 schools, kitchen upgrades at 12 schools and electrical upgrades at 25 schools. The flooring work was issued in one bid package with four groups of schools that were awarded to three different contractors. The kitchen upgrades were also a single bid package, with three groups of schools, all awarded to one contractor. The electrical work was bid in eight packages comprised of one to five schools per bid package. These eight packages went to five different contractors.  To meet these needs, BEI designed a two-part, two-step electrical upgrade. Part I is a twenty-percent general use power upgrade in the existing school's building service, run to a new panel with no additional distribution. The results of the initial building assessments indicated that this upgrade was warranted at twenty of the twenty-five schools in the District. Part 2, the electrical upgrade for technology, was done in two steps.
The first step, for both the initial and future technology implementation plan, is the power, combined with the power for Part I, in a new service along with distribution panels and wireway distribution to the Instructional Rooms. This step will serve five student stations, one teacher station, a printer and a "super television" in each classroom, plus at least one computer lab per school with thirty six computer stations, a printer and a "super television." The second step of Part 2 is the wireway distribution within the classroom to serve an additional six-student computer stations or such alternate power needs as technology may require in the future.  In all, BEI and the District worked successfully with fifteen different contractors. This was accomplished in a large part by BEI locating the project electrical engineer in the District's offices as a full-time construction administrator for eight months during the peak of the electrical installation work.