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The Troup County School Board approved the installation of a new roof for Troup High School during Thursday night’s meeting.

The board voted unanimously to award the project to Dusty Greer Roofing in the amount of $2,190,270, which was well below what the school system expected the project to cost. Assistant Superintendent Chip Medders said during Monday night’s work session that Southern A&E, the architect, had projected the roof would cost around $3 million.

Due to it being a capital outlay project, the cost to TCSS is only expected to be around $1 million, Medders said.

“I told you Monday night that I thought it was going to cost $3 million and probably cost us $2 million, so we are very, very pleased,” Medders said. “We took a sigh of relief today as it came in.”

Medders said it’ll probably be January or February before the roof is finished because the materials needed likely won’t be in until October. However, approving the bid Thursday allowed TCSS to lock in the price.

As part of the presentation, Medders went through the entire bid process. As part of the process, interested contractors had to attend a pre-bid meeting where they could ask questions to Southern A&E. Then, each interested party had until 96 hours of bid closing to ask any additional questions.

A committee scored the contractors based on a pre-determined scoring rubric based on workload, expertise and other factors. Medders said scoring takes place before bids are opened, so no pricing is known at that point.

Then bids are opened and prices are factored in based on the same rubric, where the lowest bid is awarded the maximum of 35 points and other bids are awarded a fraction of the 35 total points.

“Today, when we were opening up the first bid, we were wondering what it’s going to be. Is it going to be $3 million, is it going to be $4 million, is it going to be $5 million?” Medders said. “That is much lower than what we anticipated.”