Major Putnam Roofing Project Bids Come In $1 Million Under Projection

Three major Putnam County roofing project bids have come in roughly $1 million under projected costs.

Mayor Randy Porter said roofing improvements will occur at the County Justice Center, Avery Trace Middle School and Cookeville High School. Porter said that in total this work will cost just under $2.7 million.

“Kind of almost the opposite going on with roofing than construction,” Porter said. “Construction costs are way up but it appears that roofing costs are not. These are some of the best bids we’ve received in the last year or two on roofing projects, so we’re excited.”

Porter said that with the amount of money saved on these projects it frees up money for additional capital projects. Porter said that the roofing bids for the three projects include:

Avery Trace Middle School-$1.2 million

Putnam County Justice Center-$920,000

Cookeville High School-$576,000

“We were a little bit shocked that we got that great of a pricing,” Porter said. “Now we’re hearing… of course we’ve already got them bid and locked in but now we’re hearing that there’s a shortage of roofing materials, especially roofing shingles. Of course our roofs are not shingles but we’re hearing that there’s some delays in roofing projects across the country because of the shingle shortage. So it’s interesting right now in our times with the shortages, demand’s up but a lot of those plants and factories were shutdown because of COVID and it got them behind in their inventory.”

Porter said that school improvement bids are timed so they can be awarded before school dismisses for the summer. He said that the Justice Center roof can start whenever there’s good weather.

Porter said he expects work to begin in the next few weeks. He said addressing roofs in the county has been a goal for nearly six years.

“In 2015 we had our engineers do a survey of all the roofs in the county,” Porter said. “We knew we had several that need to be repaired and we’ve done a lot of roofs over the last few years and got the county buildings in great shape. That’s the goal of keeping these buildings going is roofs and exteriors and that way it extends the life of the building.”

Porter said that half of the Cookeville High School roof had already been repaired. The latest bid was to complete the project.