The project to replace Pilgrim High School has cleared one of its final major hurdles.

The School Committee approved the final construction documents for the new Pilgrim in a special meeting last Wednesday and the state Department of Education followed suit, giving verbal approval to the documents on Friday.

According to LeftField Project Management’s Chris Spiegel, the project has now finished everything that the Department of Education has asked of it in the pre-construction phase.

 “Once we clear this milestone, for all intents and purposes, RIDE will tip their hat on the Pilgrim project, and we will really not have too much interaction with them until we start to close out the project on the Pilgrim side,” Spiegel said.

Plans for new Pilgrim and Toll Gate high schools have been in the works since a $350-million bond was approved by voters in 2022, with plans for the schools to open in time for the 2027-28 school year. Last August the public got its first look at Pilgrim, which roughly resembled a capital E based on a central spine with three learning wings to the right and the auditorium and gym along the spine to the left.

The plans had not changed much since the committee last took a look at them, Saam Architecture’s Katie Kernizan said.

The biggest update, according to Kernizan, was that the school’s basketball court had been expanded to NCAA regulation size, up from its current National Federation of High Schools-size court.

“The footprint of the gymnasium has not changed, but instead of having this be a NFHS-striped gym, we pushed the striping of the court out 10 feet and created an NCAA-striped court,” Kernizan said. “There’s some accessory spaces that we were able to squeeze into a bit and create that additional basketball size … We’re excited about what kind of activity that can bring for the community.”

While that activity would not include any NCAA games, Kernizan said that gym teachers had requested the change so that they would have additional space to work with.

The committee also approved three early bid packages for the steel, concrete and elevators at the new school, which needed early sign-off due to the long lead times for their production.

The early bid packages also represented good news financially for the massive, two-school project, LeftField’s Spiegel said. The projected increase in construction cost over the $350 million approved by voters in 2022 has not risen beyond the $22.7 million cited over the winter, according to the most recent estimates.

In total, Spiegel said, the three early bids came in at a combined $1,068,500 under budget. Of that total, the concrete bid came in $253,000 under what LeftField had budgeted, the elevator package came in $116,000 under and the steel bid came in $699,500 under.

He gave credit to Dimeo, the company acting as construction manager on the project, for making sure there was a lot of competition for each bid.

“They did a fantastic job really drumming up competition for this work,” Spiegel said. “We received a total of nine companies we engaged with [for steel work], seven of which submitted bids. That’s by far the most that I’ve had submit on a structural steel package.”

Given the potential impacts of Trump administration tariffs on pricing, Spiegel said he was especially proud of getting the steel deal under budget.

Getting the bids in now, Spiegel said, would also put Warwick’s projects ahead of the other major school construction projects in the state right now, including the new high schools in Pawtucket and South Kingstown.

Because the schools are being built with a construction-manager-at-risk (CMAR) model, Spiegel said, there could be greater transparency about each bid throughout the schools’ construction.

“The difference between a construction-manager-at-risk delivery model, which is what we have here before you, and a general contractor model is transparency in terms of how the bid packages are awarded,” Spiegel said. “You can see that we bid out each division of work. We solicit multiple bids for that division of work. We then scope the bidders.”

Spiegel said he expects to come before the committee with two more bid packages for other major elements of the project in the near future.

School Committee Chair Shaun Galligan said it was exciting to see the new Pilgrim advance toward reality, saying he hoped it would be a school he could see his great-grandkids attend.   

“This is a huge night for our community,” Galligan said. “What has been discussed for nearly a decade, began almost five years ago, and has been desperately needed for so long … I’m just ecstatic that tonight, we’re about to take that step forward.”

Pilgrim’s groundbreaking date will be announced at the next School Committee meeting, scheduled for Tuesday, April 8. The construction documentation for the new Toll Gate High School is expected to be reviewed at that meeting.