Special Committee on Ways and Means 10/27/2026

I think when I was

thinking about it, it was. And I just turned 70 degrees.

Thank you. At this time, I will have anyone else that I have to plan today. Hope you're staying around. Guys know me. We do.

All have at once.

Then the senior chief operating officer begins. Procedural project executive, bring director of helping through our process. Awesome.

Then we'll be okay. So it looks like it's all one big discussion. You guys

got what's going on, how we're gonna pick

it up. Or You scared?

Yeah. Alright. I was gonna suggest you start with phase two and three and do the older projects first. So that would be downs. Crystal is here to support on financial questions throughout.

Hope I

don't know if you're done, though. Sorry. So

there are paper copies, and they're rather list... I think you might have them, but we could pass them out.

It'd be easier to read.

They're gonna book Shane to answer exhibit one. Please.

So, you know, the school projects that we've talked more about in this committee are phases two and three. Those are managed by Downs. Phase four projects, which are the newer, like, a $100,000,000 bonds that you all passed, that is managed by Ruffield. So, you know, it's it's one one topic, but it covers two vendors. Yeah.

So so the balance... So the zero levels be gone and moving in today's door is That's right.

That's right.

Because it's two separate contracts. Yeah. K. How are you? Good.

Chairman, how are you?

Fine. Very well.

So the... Good evening, everybody.

Chairman, doctors, the presentation we're looking at

has the ribbon going across. I think it's... These are both very similar in color. So we'll start off with, what we do is on a monthly basis, we provide this update to the school building committee, and what I did is utilize the presentation you just gave earlier, this afternoon, to put this into the presentations. They have very similar and up to date information.

So the second page is a overview of the projects. The projects in the green are the projects that have been completed, and we are pleased to say that Spaziano Middle School, upper campus was just completed recently. We had a road cutting here a few weeks ago. The schools in the bottom portion are the ones that are currently under construction. They're Lima store, Nestor West Broadway, Pizzeria pre k, property pre k, Mount Pleasant, and r k.

So those represent phase two and three, and r k was initially in phase four was pulled into phase three as well just for reference. The third page is a dashboard that we have. It kinda gives an overall status of what the project is. If it's a nice schedule, if you want, I could... We go.

Try to do both. And what this gives you... Let me see. Mhmm. Give you an overall view of the projects.

It's kind of like a health check for us, what we call. So the hit... Project, we just had a couple of challenges, including a work stoppage by items. Right now, it has... The schedule has been impacted, but there is a recovery, schedule that is being scheduled and and and, the cost provided for it.

Overall, the other four projects, Fogarty, Messer, Lima, Gilbert, Stuart, and Bob Pleasant are all on schedule. If you go by any of the sites and have been by the sites and, you know, officer Peterson at our k, which has recently started to steal there as well. That project is tracking a little bit behind schedule as well. That project, they get started three or four months later than the other, and they are quickly catching up. But this status dashboard just kinda gives you an overall kind of an idea of where we are as far as each schedule out of each project, and I give you some comments about some milestone dates.

So, again, good document to have, and it's something that we could share monthly or quarterly basis as well so you guys have

a good idea. Just a quick question. Sure. So there's all this stuff. So so you've been presenting similar presentation to the school building to maybe every...

Not often? Monthly. Yeah. At least monthly. Monthly.

Okay. So I I I I know what the achieved driving date is by speaking to to folks that have been working more closely with this. But if you kinda... Not to go too in the weeds, but can you kind of describe some of the terminology on the manager?

Sure.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So

a dry new day, some critical activities that you track for a construction project are the foundation of getting out of the ground, and you'll hear people say steel, which is a real critical milestone as well. Drying, or you'll hear sometimes building complete or not building complete, but there is building closure. So, basically, when you point... When a milestone like a dry end date, it's critical to understand that that means the roof's on, the steel's in, and there's something enclosing the building. Doesn't have to necessarily be the brick or the metal panels that will be going there, but there's something there that is enclosed the building so that if it rains, it snows, sleets, it it protects the building so workers can work inside the building at that point without any impact.

So, again, it's a critical date because weather impacts construction a lot. So we wanna get these buildings weather tight, dried in so that they could continue to work, especially if you get into the winter months and without any impact to what the weather might be out there except for, obviously, the safety of of the individuals working there and getting on the site. So that's why that's a critical milestone that we always track. Some of the other things we track are MEP, which is mechanical electrical power, which means that system has been turned on. Again, another critical milestone after the dry end date or building closure date.

We have these real big milestones that happen that that kind of make a big difference on the operation of the building. And our better indication of if the project is on schedule, then, you know, going by a project one day and only seeing five people there because been raining out, and then the next day there's 30 people there. So on a day by day, it's really difficult to gauge for projects on schedule or not. But these big milestones kind of tell you, yes, they're making making those milestones. They're either on target prior, you know, just a little before the target or after that.

So that's why we throw those dates out there with you.

So one question, how we explore milestones or associated release?

So we try to to identify, like, four or five, but I could tell you for a fact, like, many of these schedules could be anywhere from 25 to 30 pages on average. Some of them range to, like, a 100 pages. Some get very detailed. And that's why we look at those big milestones. And again, like, site work, starting site work, doing your foundations.

Right? Getting out of the ground, they'll call it. And they're tied into some very specific things too. So starting site work, digging, foundation, steel, dry in, and mechanical startups. Right?

So the reason why those are critical are risk related. So you dig in the ground. You don't know what you're digging because you can't investigate everywhere. You get done digging, you get your foundation, it takes the risk off. Okay?

Well, now you know that your budget is secure because you've just taken some some risk off. You got your foundations in, so now you know that your next milestone is... It's critical too, which is the steel. Right? So you get your steel off.

These all eventually take a small amount of risk off and also help to to understand what the next milestone is gonna be.

Oh,

that's a big guaranteed maximum price. So that's something that we track. So each design... So we've had the delivery method we've chosen for these projects, which we started doing in Providence probably about six or seven years ago, is traditionally you go out and hire an architect. The architect designs the building for about a year to eighteen months.

Then you bring the contractor on, and the contractor's gotta develop, you know, a scope of work based on those drawings. There's not a lot of communication or team up with that. We developed a method that's been out there for a long time and as a procurement, which is design build. We bring the architects and construction managers together on day one So that the builders start thinking about how they're gonna build the project as the designers are building... Are designing it.

And they have constant communication because they're a team. So if the designer is designing something that is not within budget or that is problematic. And in the past, we've had problems with long lead items, which is sometimes you just can't get certain materials because, you know, it's either not available or there's been some other issue that's happened with it. The builder will be aware of that architect. So their builder will be able to respond immediately to their team and say, we can't put that metal panel on the building because there's been a problem in manufacturing that or getting that.

They make those revisions immediately. It's streamlines. It usually is more cost effective than the traditional method. And at the conclusion of either 60% completion of the construction documents or a 100%, we request a guaranteed maximum price from that team that says, yes. We agree that we will build this project for that price.

And if anything within these drawings are not included or we made a mistake, we pay for it. It's our risk. If you come in and you tell me, well, I'm gonna add it in the playground, well, that's that's a change order. Right? So the reason why we do that is we reduce change orders.