"Is there any point to which you wish to draw my attention?"
"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
"The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.
      — Arthur Conan Doyle, Silver Blaze

It was a short meeting tonight, as these things go -- the school committee spent a scant three hours grilling architect Louis Turoddo, engineers from Edwards & Kelsey, and representatives of ABC Construction about the heating, septic line, and punch list items on the nearly-final Portsmouth High School gym. At issue were two outstanding invoices, one for about 40k, one for 13. When all was said and done, the committee was satisfied with the answers they heard and paid the smaller one.

The main bone of contention was the heating system, which failed at the first cold snap. One of the ABC guys explained it:

"There was nothing functionally wrong with the physical heating system installation, but the electric motor and pulleys in the units were not correct. This was only determined after trying every thing. When the unit ran for a period of time, the motor would trip off on safety to prevent overheating. What needed to be done, per manufacturer, was that the belts and pulleys needed to be changed. This was built to spec, but we have no idea if they built it wrong. It was only once we had this long running period of time that we found the motors could not handle the load. They gave us part numbers, we changed all belts and pulleys, and the problem has been solved. The system is running quiet, holding at 70 degrees. In my 30 years, i have never once had a problem with that manufacturer. Never had this kind of mistake. Don't know if we'll ever find why it was built that way. But as soon as we changed them, it was immediately dealt with."

There is a separate issue, the cold temperatures in the boys and girls locker rooms. ABC said:

"It has to do with the placement of the room sensor -- room that was chosen has no effect. It was put in a protected area, in a room with an interior wall, the booster's room. The room doesn't have near the loss of the locker room with an uninsulated exterior wall." It was, ABC said, placed where they were directed to put it.

Terri Cortvriend asked about testing and balancing the system, the process of ajusting airflow to optimize delivery. While the contention was that the requirement had been waived in construction, ABC readily admitted they couldn't find a paper trail, and they agreed to perform this adjustment at their expense.

The mechanical engineer from Edwards & Kelsey agreed this was needed to deal with the temperature variations, but stressed that this was not a failure, like the belts and pulleys.

"The unit got delivered as specified. In design, we do a calcuation of the duct flow, and it's never the same as what gets installed. It's construction, that's what happens. You do a testing and balancing. If that had happened at the end of construction, we wouldn't be sitting here. It's very common thing. It's very normal. It's a normal adjustment under testing and balancing."

Some remaining rancor about who should have done the testing and balancing notwithstanding, things were worked out. The setpoint on the main gym will be moved down, and the locker rooms set higher.

I quote this at some length as a way of getting back to the bit about the dog in the night. Larry Fitzmorris was sitting there the entire time, and when the meeting was opened to public comment, and Chair Sylvia Wedge asked him if he wished to speak, he declined.

I found this most curious.

At the last School Committee meeting, PCC, Inc. President Larry Fitzmorris had this to say:

"I have considerable experience in high technology integration systems. These people did two things wrong: they did not check, and they did not integrate once installed. The system has not been integrated, and someone has failed to do their job. Two people are responsible: The architect and ABC for the subcontractor."

As to checking, they did. The belt failure was a latent problem exposed by the extended cold snap. Now perhaps by a generous stretch of imagination, one could construe "integration" to mean testing and balancing, but I don't think that's a common sense use of the word. So there are two possibilities: Everyone at this meeting, from the architect, to the MEs, to the builders, was flat-out lying, or last week, Larry Fitzmorris was talking out his ass.

He had the opportunity to get up tonight and tell everyone off, and he's no shrinking violet. So let's just remember, if he gets up in a meeting from now on to talk about the gym, he had his chance to duke it out on the facts, and he passed without so much as a quiet bark.