Workers are ready to start moving dirt for a 750-student elementary school along Russellville Road after Warren County Public Schools’ Board of Education approved early bids for the project.

“It’s going smoothly,” board chairman Kerry Young said of the project. “This is just kind of step one.”

Ultimately, the board went with the lowest bids it received. It agreed to pay $514,200 to Scott and Murphy Inc. for earthwork and $630,522.66 to Scotty’s Contracting and Stone for pavement. As many as five bidders vied for the earthwork phase, while two competed for the pavement.

The project’s initial estimate put construction costs at $17.2 million, with architect, construction manager and other fees bringing the total to roughly $20 million.

Young said he expects workers to begin visiting the site next week and the entire project to take about 14 months. The goal is to have students in school by the fall of 2018.

Before then, workers need to prepare the site for construction.

During the meeting, board members were careful to remind its construction partners to avoid land at the back of the property that is part of the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program.

The program gives a yearly rental payment to landowners who agree to avoid developing environmentally sensitive land. If the land was disturbed, the district would have to pay back the U.S. Department of Agriculture all the money the previous owner had received.

“That’s not going to be an issue because we’re going to fence that area off,” Young said.

Additionally, pavement in front of Henry F. Moss Middle School, which the elementary school will sit next to, needs to be thicker to accommodate the weight of incoming buses.

During the meeting, the board also entered into an interim contract with Scott and Murphy for excavation and storm drainage in the amount of $100,000. The board also granted permission to use Multivista, a service that uses photography to track the progress of construction projects.

Mike Wilson, the district’s facilities director, recommended the service “so that at the end of the project, once the school’s built, we’ll have from day one all the way through photographic evidence … if we need to go back and look at anything, we have it memorialized.”

After the initial work, the district plans to issue another request for bids for the actual construction of the school.

Architect Justin McElfresh with Sherman Carter Barnhart said at a board meeting last month that bidding for that would likely start in June.