Tuesday, February 26, 2019

February 26 Update

We've been working to engage an architectural firm since my last update. A request for qualifications was placed in the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce and it ran for two weeks. On Feb 22, we had a pre-submission conference with interested firms to explain our project and help firms understand what we've heard from our community about the new high school. We talked about proposed schedules and asked that firms who were shortlisted for interviews be prepared to discuss their ideas for design and siting of the new school.

Statements of Qualifications (SOQs) were due today at 3 p.m. We received submissions from EL Architects, Dowa/IBI and KMB. The Design Committee will be scoring the SOQs this week. Firms selected to be interviewed will be notified on Monday.

The board rescheduled their March meeting to Thursday, March 7 in order to interview prospective firms and meet timelines. Each firm will be given an hour to present their qualifications and thinking about our project and answer questions. Members of the community who would like to be present are invited to attend this regular open meeting of the board on March 7 at 6 p.m. at TMS.

Once the board selects a firm, Doug Nichols and I will begin negotiations on the scope of the work and fees. I expect that this will proceed quickly.

Teator and Crocker Consulting has been working with our staff and administrators to create our Educational Specifications. They are drafting their report this week and should be able to deliver by the time an architect is engaged. Educational Specifications are the number of various rooms and spaces needed by a school in order to deliver programs and services. Questions such as how big should a classroom be and how many classrooms do we need and how can we use spaces in multiple ways and throughout the day, are all factored into this report. We've indicated that we want to be able to utilize spaces for a variety of purposes so that space doesn't sit idle. Educational specifications are the cornerstone of the project. Staying on budget and schedule means staying true to our Ed Specs. Ed Specs inform the next step in the process- Schematic Design.

Schematic Design is scheduled to begin in the second week of March and conclude in mid-April with our first cost estimate completed shortly thereafter followed by our first round of value engineering. Schematic design is the first draft of drawings for layout of the building and elevation views. Cost estimate is estimating the cost of the design. Value engineering is looking at whether the design is delivering the Ed Specs in the most cost-effective way. The completion of these steps will give us our first look at how tight our budget will be.

This project is on an aggressive timeline so that we can minimize the effect of 6% inflation annually and also receive SCAP funding in this year's funding cycle. If we miss this year's cycle, SCAP funds won't be available again until July, 2020. All of our partners at OSPI, Lewis County and the architects understand our timeline and have expressed their desire to help us hit our marks.