With many disciplines working together on a variety of projects, perhaps the best way to get a feel for a firm’s impact is simply, a coffee with… the people doing the work.
This video series features experts sharing insights gained during their time in the AEC industry, with an emphasis on the importance of collaboration to meet a common goal of creating improved communities.
In this edition, we sit down with leaders of our owner’s representative group that specialize in school bond management to hear how their work maximizes taxpayer dollars to benefit students, educators, and the surrounding community alike.
Discover more in the video and check out the transcript below:
Shaun: You know, each, each project I’ve been on… it takes a team. It definitely takes a village to do a school project of any size… that’s what we’re here for.
Bob: I am Bob Collins. I’ve work with, I’m a client services manager and I manage K-12 Bond project.
Sarah: I’m Sarah Oaks. I’m the director of project and construction Management here at Otak.
Shaun: I’m Sean Stuhldryer. I’m a program manager at Otak and I manage K-12 bond programs.
Brian: I’m Brian Hardebeck. I’m a client services manager here at Otak, and primarily in the K-12 and higher education market sector.
What is a school bond and how do they work?
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Bob: Many people don’t realize that, particularly in Oregon, school districts to do any kind of major capital construction need to raise money through a bond
It doesn’t come from the state funding that they normally get for day to day expenses. And so the, a bond program captures major capital improvements, investments, and renovations.
Shaun: Every bond is different. Some bonds are one school and some bonds are 30 schools. In general, the more projects you would have then I would say the more phases or waves you need to have, because it’s really not practical to be working on every school at the exact same time.
Brian: What we do is it’s all for the kids. That’s what we’re here for, to improve their environment and allow the educators and the district leadership to concentrate on what they do best, educate and let us set that heavy lift for them.
Sarah: A lot of schools have facility staff and oftentimes they can do project management, but as you said, they have, you know, day jobs that they’ve gotta keep up with kind of a heavy workload.
And so whether it’s for just that period of time where the bond is in passage, or if there’s a particular complexity that maybe those facility folks don’t have experience with, I think that’s where we have a real value add, to kind of come alongside whatever resources the district has.
How do you responsibly manage public funds?
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Bob: A lot of our service can start in pre-bond management, assisting the client and really understanding what their needs are.
Working alongside with an architecture or design team to do some pre-bond and public engagement with the voters to help the district assure they’ll have a good, strong message out there, and that the voters have the public engagement that they need to understand what they’re gonna pay for.
Shaun: Oftentimes I’ll work with school districts to develop their district standards, and district standards, help design teams meet the needs and the priorities of the district.
You know, so you don’t overshoot in what you build frequently. We’ll identify tiers of priorities. Those are a few ways that we just return the best investment back on the taxpayer money.
Brian: One Of our major roles is the, uh, master communicator and facilitators to the district and to the voters.
We take on a sometimes very public, outward facing view for the client to really actively listen to them, take their feedback, and communicate that to the district. Help them facilitate the decision making process that includes voter input into the prioritization of projects, but also encompass the, “what’s in it for me,” question from the voter.
Bob: I think that one of our biggest roles is we are identifying risk to the project and then communicating to them. And in doing so, that I think develops trust with all those folks.
Sarah: You know, other things we do, I think particularly with engagement is making sure that districts have a citizens oversight committee set up too, to kind of put eyes and ears on the process.
How do you cater to specific school district needs?
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Shaun: I’ve worked with clients with, you know, acquiring properties, dealing with entitlements, dealing with development codes.
One interesting thing about, I think, in our business is every project is unique. It’s always a new team, new entities or people coming together for the first time.
Bob: One of the things we found very important to help develop a team from the beginning before there is really a team is chartering. Putting that out there so that there really is expectation setting from the get-go at the highest level.
So, there’s an opportunity to try to have members on your team that you feel have the same vision and passion about doing the work. And then again, being transparent, always in communication, you can’t communicate enough.
Sarah: You cannot overstate the importance of communication. I think a fundamental agreement for that is, is trust.
And I’m glad you mentioned chartering. I mean, that’s such an important thing to kind of get up everyone’s different goals on the table and figure out how those are gonna get woven together.
Brian: I think for me, uh, being a coastal region client service manager, I think one thing that I’m involved with more than probably inland groups is coastal resiliency and how to deal with rising, rising water levels.
Earthquake preparedness and resiliency for post-incident occupation of the new school or a school building or a public facility in this case. Where is it located? That all plays into the planning involved in a bond program for coastal districts, coastal clients.
Shaun: You know, a lot of school districts maybe they pass a bond every 10 years or, you know, every 20 years. Maybe it’s more often every five years. But, you know, the bond runs its course and then the school district’s not in the business of building things, they’re in the business of education. But we’re out serving other school districts and staying sharp, keeping up with technology and changes.
Sarah: I would like to say that we’re experts in uncertainty, right? Of figuring out how we’re gonna face it, how we’re gonna bring a team through it, how we’re gonna make decisions to come out on the other side of it.
So oftentimes we’re building spaces where, you know, they aren’t able to teach that because they don’t have space for it yet. And so sometimes it’s coming alongside educators as they’re putting together curriculum and we’re designing the space at the same time.
And so, I think it’s really figuring out not just how to build a building, but how to build a building to be used immediately and then for generations. You know, that I think is something you have to, you have to really have a good crystal ball, or yeah, a good sense of it.
What do you find rewarding about school bond work?
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Brian: This industry’s very personal to me. I’m a product of a career and technical education class (CTE) in high school.
I just recently worked for a bond client, rural client on the Oregon coast. We saw the need to expand their career and technical education offerings, built a new CTE laboratory building for them. And I think at the end of that, we used the building as an educational process.
The kids that were already in their CTE programs had an exploratory program to bring in kids that really hadn’t thought of what their careers are going to be. They hadn’t figured out their “why” yet. But something caught ’em. And to see that engagement from the students and something that lit up their “why” was fascinating to me. And it was, it was great to see.
Sarah: I think one of the most gratifying moments that I’ve had just in this particular line of work is… so I’ve had an opportunity to work and participate in ACE Mentors, which is an after school program for high school students that are looking to explore careers in architecture, engineering, and construction.
I’ve now been in this field long enough that some of these students actually had gone through programs at a school that I worked on and had caught the bug, got interested in this line of work because they were able to work in one of the construction labs or in the STEM space of this school that hadn’t existed before we worked on this project.
And so it was very cool just that they are now getting exposed to different hands-on, project-based learning opportunities, career paths that are now kind of bringing them into this, in this industry.
So that felt very full circle for me and just very, very exciting just to hear how much they were enjoying those spaces. I really appreciated that.
Bob: Along the lines of what Sarah mentioned, managing teams of other Otak project managers and seeing their growth, that’s been a lot of fun.
We were asked to build essentially four schools and get ’em all done at the same substantial completion time, and everybody in the industry said, that’s ridiculous. No way that could really be done.
We did get it done on time and under budget, we had money left. So that was a really big, feather in my cap.
Shaun: Something really rewarding for me is opening up an elementary school. And it’s almost because you’ve got this community ready to go to come together, and that’s always just really rewarding to watch that happen.
We opened a school, RA Morrow Kennedy Elementary School in Clackamas County, a while back and I just was really fortunate with a fantastic team.
I mean, well under budget, ahead of schedule. Everything was ready when they wanted to move in in the summer and people were exuberant. It just felt like there was a, there was something in the air where everything came together. You could just see this community developing. That was just a really cool moment for me.
Brian: The school building needs to be more than just a school building. It needs to be a community asset. It’s a community center. It is all for the kids, but it’s also for the community.