Dondlinger Construction selected as manager of new $60 million Southeast High project

The Wichita school board voted unanimously Monday to select Dondlinger Construction as construction manager for the new Southeast High School, the largest project of the 2008 bond issue.

The board selected Dondlinger over four other construction firms that applied for the work and made pitches last week. The vote came after a district committee voted earlier Monday to recommend Dondlinger and move forward with the project.

Dondlinger will oversee construction on the largest and most expensive high school ever built in Wichita, a $60 million new Southeast High at the corner of 127th Street East and Pawnee.

The Wichita board recently approved a different approach to the bid process for Southeast High. The process, called construction at-risk management procurement, allows the district to hire a general contractor by negotiation before the design is complete and without competitive bidding.

The committee interviewed five firms: Dondlinger; Hutton Construction; Walz Harman Huffman; Crossland Construction of Columbus, Kan.; and Flintco Constructive Solutions of Tulsa.

Lynn Rogers, a school board member and part of the selection committee, said Monday he was impressed with all five firms’ proposals.

“I felt all five would be very capable of providing services that we needed,” Rogers said.

The committee interviewed each firm during an executive session Friday, and each member scored each proposal on a 200-point scale, said Ken Arnold of Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture, the district’s bond manager. The scores were weighted as well: 60 percent on a firm’s proposal and qualifications and 40 percent on the interview.

Dondlinger had the highest collective score, with 186.3 points, Arnold said Monday.

Southeast would be the third high school project for Dondlinger from the most recent Wichita bond issue. The firm was general contractor for an $18 million addition and renovation of Heights High and a $14.2 million project at South High.

This story was originally published October 13, 2014 at 3:11 PM with the headline "Dondlinger Construction selected as manager of new $60 million Southeast High project."