Waterford — The town plans to pay $20,000 for a third-party review of plans to renovate its Department of Public Works headquarters after the architect hired to design the plans largely has been absent from meetings of the Building Committee and took eight months to deliver updated designs.

A committee of town officials and board members has been meeting for months to reboot the renovation project at the town’s municipal complex, which was built more than 50 years ago and includes offices, the town’s transfer station and a garage for town vehicles and equipment.

The building, a former cloth stenciling mill, is out of date and some parts of it are not up to current building code. An initial effort to develop renovation plans for the Route 85 facility it was put on hold in 2012 while the town undertook a multiyear school renovation project.

Members of the Building Committee requested updated plans from the architecture firm hired to design the renovations, Bridgeport-based Fletcher Thompson, in February after the project had been on hold for several years.

But the committee members didn’t receive fully updated plans until September, committee member Cheryl Larder said Wednesday, and then only in the form of hundreds of pages of files stored on a USB flash drive.

The Fletcher Thompson architect assigned to the project has not attended a Building Committee meeting since June, and failed to respond to calls or emails from Town Attorney Robert Avena, according to committee meeting minutes.

Fletcher Thompson has estimated the project will cost the town up to $10.2 million. It would include bringing the facility up to current building, fire, health and safety codes, remediating hazardous materials on the property, making it more energy-efficient, upgrading the heating and cooling systems and renovating office space for the town’s Utility Commission and Department of Public Works employees.

Town officials already approved $87,000 to pay Fletcher Thompson in 2014 to update the original 2012 plan to redesign the building.

Because the Building Committee has had so much difficulty obtaining updated plans, and because the renovation would be the biggest town construction project since the school project, the committee requested a $20,000 appropriation from the town’s capital budget to pay for a third party to review the plans.

“We should have a professional say, ‘This is the way to go or not the way to go,’ based on the size of the project,” Larder said.

Fletcher Thompson did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

The Connecticut Post reported in April that the firm was facing eviction from its Bridgeport headquarters and was the subject of multiple lawsuits over unpaid bills.

The appropriation was approved by the Board of Selectmen and Board of Finance in the past month, and 15 members of the Representative Town Meeting unanimously approved the amount at their meeting Tuesday. The RTM also voted Tuesday to waive a 15-day waiting period to allow the commission to move forward quickly.

Larder said the committee hopes to hire a firm to review the plans as soon as possible, although the revised designs Fletcher Thompson submitted last month do not appear to be totally up to date and the request for proposals may not be issued immediately.

m.shanahan@theday.com