Demolition work at Montour High School was scheduled to be completed today, with construction on a $48.6 million renovation to begin full bore over the summer.

Construction manager Carl DeJulio told the Montour school board last Thursday that the demolition contractor would take "a few days to demobilize," then the buildings would be clear. Construction bid requests went out March 17, and the bids will be opened April 29.

Those bids, and the work itself, will include an unprecedented twist.

Taking advantage of a recent state Supreme Court decision, Montour will do the construction on what's called a "one-prime" basis, meaning one primary contractor will be responsible for the entire project, with other firms serving as subcontractors.

"Our architects estimate that doing this on a one-prime basis will save about $1 million," Dr. DeJulio told the board.

In the past, schools were required to have separate contracts with the firms handling the various aspects of a building project -- a plumbing contractor, a heating and air conditioning contractor, an electrical contractor and so forth -- in addition to a general contractor doing the basic construction.

Dr. DeJulio said that requirement, which was supported by construction unions, was intended to make sure smaller firms got chances to bid on major projects.

It was changed by the Legislature in the late 1990s, thanks to lobbying from the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, but court challenges have kept districts from going the one-prime route.

Dr. DeJulio said the state Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of the school districts, and he is taking advantage of that green light.

"What it really does is eliminate a lot of lawsuits at the end of the construction," he said. Typically, he said, contractors on school jobs end up bickering over which one caused which problem, which uses up valuable time while work is proceeding and often results in a legal tangle at the end.

With one contractor in charge, that contractor can sort out the other contractors instead of the school district having to do so, he said.

Dr. DeJulio granted that such a system would, indeed, favor larger, better-established firms, and could move the business away from local firms toward national ones. "But my responsibility is to the school district, and it's an opportunity to save money," he said.

The renovation is being done in phases, with students moving into new sections of the high school as they are finished.

It will add an office wing between the building housing ninth and 10th grades and the building housing 11th and 12th grades, and redo everything, creating clusters for subject areas and providing space, tools and technology for the district's new focus on technology education.

Demolition and asbestos removal began last summer, and the district has already weathered some delays caused by uncharted utility lines and asbestos problems that were greater than anticipated. It is expected to be complete in the spring of 2011.

Dr. DeJulio, who was previously acting superintendent at Montour and stayed on as a consultant to oversee construction, said he hopes the slowdown in the building market nationwide might yield some additional savings for Montour.

"Let's hope we hit the market at the right time and contractors want this job," he said.