New High School construction brings jobs to Denison

SHERMAN, TX - The school district says this project could bring hundreds of jobs to Denison. Jobs they'd like to give to local workers. So today they held an open vendor fair to allow sub contractors to bid on these jobs.

Randy Smith says in a weak economy, he came to the new Denison High School contract bidding, in hopes of bringing some much needed jobs home to his company in Sherman.

"We think there's a turn around coming, but we're looking at another year or 2 of riding this out, so a project like this would be a great asset." said Smith.

But Smith says with so many people looking for work, the competition is always stiff.

"Recently the bid table for projects like this, we've had a lot of good competition. We're usually bidding against 4, 5, 6, maybe 8, 10, 12 competitors." Smith said.

"There's always some of the larger contractors from the Dallas/Fort Worth area that will be bidding on packages like this, but this is an effort on our part to increase local participation." said Assistant Superintendent of Business Services, Lee McNair.

The school district says the purpose of the vendor fair on Monday is to allow prospective bidders to ask questions and get an idea of what the scope of the project will be.

It's estimated that the 290,000 sq. ft. new Denison High School building and the 50,000 sq. ft. athletic complex could put 3 to 4 hundred people to work over the next 2 years.

Bryan Vassar is an estimator for Balfour Beatty, the construction manager of this project.

He says they'll be taking bids from subcontractors to do things like electrical, roofing, flooring and painting.

"We receive proposals on the date, and we evaluate those for completeness and price and qualifications." Vassar said.

Vassar says they're looking to have all bids in by July 24th, and make decisions by mid August.

The school district told us today, they've already used a lot of local companies for the renovations and construction at some of the other Denison schools.

They plan to start building the new high school and athletic complex around September this year.