MARSHALL — David Maroney compared it to having an out-of-body experience – seeing construction bids for a building addition at Park Side Elementary and other work come in at over $600,000 higher than an estimate.

But Maroney, of architectural firm ATS&R, and other presenters at a Marshall School Board meeting Monday night said they were going to keep moving forward, by soliciting bids for a changed design.

“These things happen. Not very often, but we’re going to work through this,” Maroney said. “We are doing everything in our power to be able to make this building come in to the funds available, and we stand behind that.”

The school board voted to reject bids for a building addition at Park Side and security upgrades at Marshall High School and MATEC. In a separate motion, the board voted to redesign the bid package, and advertise for bids again.

The building addition at Park Side and security upgrades were the first stage of a $29.8 million building referendum that passed in Marshall this spring. MPS plans to build additional classrooms at Park Side and move Early Childhood education to Park Side. Later, the plans include construction of a new elementary school to replace the current West Side Elementary.

The budgeted construction cost for Park Side/security project was $2.76 million.

On Dec. 5, MPS opened three bids for the Park Side construction and security upgrades. They received a $3.395 million base bid from Bladholm Construction, a $3.49 million base bid from Sussner Construction, and a $3.548 million base bid from Minneapolis-based Brennan Construction of Minnesota.

Maroney and Chris Ziemer of ICS Consulting gave the school board an update Monday on the bidding process.

Although the Park Side project received a lot of calls, there weren’t many bids in a lot of categories, Ziemer said.

“We really don’t have an answer as to why that is,” Ziemer said. Some categories also received bids that were much higher than expected. “It could be that we’re seeing contractors are a little busier.”

Ziemer said they would likely send bid invites out to contractors in a bigger radius to see if they could generate more interest, as well as following up with local contractors.

Maroney said ATS&R and ICS also looked at ways to make the design of the building addition simpler, to try and help bring costs down.

“What we’ve done, we’ve taken a re-look at the plan, keeping square footages of the classrooms similar,” he said. “ECFE is a little bit smaller, but essentially still a large classroom.”

Among other changes, the updated design would simplify the plumbing and roof of the building addition, and identify a more clear access and entry for the construction zone.

The new design package would go out for bid in January, Maroney said. A pre-bid meeting will be held Jan. 8, and sealed bids will be opened on Jan. 28.