11.19.25 Special Board Meeting - 2025-11-19 23:00:35

001America and Republic for it stands one nation undergrad with liberty and justice for Why is our canon sun for bad? So off? I feel like it games, it's a different, we have to have agree. What's that? It's either fast or slow. There's like two different can. Yes? Yes. They're gonna pause. Okay. So roll call Steve. Here. Jessica. Here. Tom? Here. Angie. Here. Here. Ka Here. And you here? Is it this one? Okay. Any public comments in the basket? Don't see Angie. Okay. Thank you. And we are ready to kick off our meeting. Andrew, you wanna kick us off? I will. Good evening everyone. Tonight. Specialist to our meeting. We'll feature three vendor presentations related to a feasibility study for the school to Athens. Each presenter will have 30 minutes to respond to a set of

002questions the board developed following the initial vendor presentation on October 15th, with time allocated within that period of 30 minutes for the board to ask any clarifying questions. After the three presentations, the board will discuss the information presented and take action to select a vendor to conduct a feasibility study for the school to serve Rapid. I'd like to provide just a bit of background and context regarding the potential collaboration with a business partner to conduct a feasibility study. A feasibility study for school districts is a comprehensive analysis to determine if a proposed project such as a new facility renovation or district reorganization is viable and beneficial. It assesses various factors including educational needs, financial implications, and potential challenges, ultimately guiding decision making for the school board in our community. A feasibility study is a critical

003precursor to facilities planning, allowing decision makers to identify potential issues, uncover potential challenges, and it provides valuable data for decision making. A feasibility study offers hard data and insights that empower leaders to make smarter more responsible investment decisions in our schools. Other feasibility studies are the strong evidence-based foundation demonstrating that any projects we have been carefully evaluated and validated. At this time, I'd like to invite Our Myron team in for their presentation. We will, You have in your board packet the presentation. You also have a hard copy of the presentation. Good evening. Nice To see you again. How long your team settles in, if you'd like to do introductions. And then you have approximately a half an hour for your presentations and share Your fine questions. Okay. Sound good? Thank you. Everybody's got a copy

004in front. Yes. So yeah, we'll start with introductions again and uh, there's, you'll see two familiar faces and one new face. So, um, but on behalf of our team, so there's Clinton, I are back again. And then, uh, Matt Wilford, who's from Bray, and Lee Ler, who's from Myron were the other two. They both had commitments to other meetings tonight so that they, they could not make it. But then you at me, we also asked Bridge to up, so Bridgets with me at Myron and she works more on the communication side, and that was one of your questions. So we thought it'd be good for her to be a part of it as well. So, so we're back again. So Craig with Myron and, and run the loss operations for Myron. And, um, again, great

005to be here. And I'm Clint s sell with, uh, gray Architects. And I'm Bridget Joyce with Myron Construction as well. So, um, education communications specialist. Um, so I work with districts like Athens throughout the state. Um, communications, both pre-rec and all the way through, through the medication. So I call myself the fund committee. Okay. So we'll get started and uh, I just want that in front me here as well, but we'll click through. So what we did is had to be on first. There you were. Who was messing with me? I'm sorry. You know that I don't like technology. Um, so what we did is, uh, we just went with the questions that you had and, uh, so we'll jump into 'em. So at the, you'll see at the top of a section here, just

006references that, the questions that you had. So we'll dive right in and then maybe after each question we'll just see if that answered what you wanted to understand and keep going through. So we'll start with Clint. Alright, so, um, we did provide a little bit of information on this, um, during the, our, our first presentation. So the, the slide up here is, um, again, the, uh, some of the ideas that we, we brought forth last time with the budgets typically fall into buckets of immediate need, emerging need and future need. Uh, the example to the right there, um, was, uh, from Westby, uh, tonight you asked for a little bit more, uh, specific examples. So I got all kinds of binders and stuff for you. Um, so there's two different districts we wanted to bring

007to you. Um, one was Wild Rose. I'll kind of jump a little bit to the chase. They ultimately passed a, uh, $15.6 million referendum, uh, in April 22. Uh, so that is this district. They are a two building district. They have an elementary school and a middle high school. Um, a lot of our work, I don't know if you wanna grab maybe those budgets, not too, but a lot of our work, um, with that district, uh, involved capital maintenance, there was a very small addition part portion of the project at the, uh, the middle school. Um, so, um, essentially again, we created the facility study document, which I passed out. Uh, and then Myron uh, provided budgeting based on that, both for, uh, just for the capital maintenance stuff. So here you can see, uh,

008the red, orange and yellow is kind of that emerging, uh, immediate and future. And then we also did have a couple of projects that, um, percolated out from that project, which were captured, uh, in the second budget, which I believe is, is also there. Uh, the second district, uh, is Denmark School District. And I like this example a lot because I think it shows the power of the facility study. Um, we did a facility study, I wanna say for them back in, uh, 2017 or 2018 following, uh, a project we had done with them. They kind of said, thanks, uh, we'll take it from here. They did a bunch of work on their own flooring, ceilings, lighting, uh, but when it came time for them to do a facility project, um, then they reached back

009out to us. And again, we did, uh, the budgeting effort for them, uh, as part of that. Um, and then, uh, again, they ended up going forward with a referendum past it. And I think the nice success story is now we're back again, uh, with another facility study. They wanted us to update that so they could kind of chart out their next, uh, couple years. Uh, again, don't know if it'll lead to a project or not. Uh, but again, I think just the power of, of the facility study and the fact that they are kind of using it and following, following it for their planning purposes. Uh, and again, the, the document to the right there shows, uh, the budgeting that was done, uh, as part of that project, I'll say pre referendum. So any

010questions on that piece of it? So again, your question there was just trying to see some examples and understand what the deliverables look like. Makes sense. So PaperClick versions that I handed out have both of the examples in it. There's stack from a yes for the copy perspective. So you'll see the laundry list of items and budgets and that type of stuff. Okay. So we'll keep going unless you tell us otherwise Then. Um, so question number two asked. So what are the, you know, what are some of the, uh, on feasibility report in quotes, please provide a sample of the special provisions from the contract, both for the school and with the contractor. So if we were understanding the question correctly, uh, what we are talking about here is understanding, you know, what we put

011together once, once you get to an actual project and you're actually putting packages together for companies to bid on. So we we're just showing you examples here of, uh, our big, our big thing is a scope of documents. So we want very clearly layout for all the subcontractors and suppliers what the expectations are on the project. So there will be a, a spec section that is part of the plans during that bidding phase. So every contractor knows exactly what the scope of their work is when they have to have that work completed, and know what the schedules, what our expectations are for safety, quality, that type of stuff. So we'll divide it a lot of times into multiple bid packages. So we may have a certain bid package for maybe some site work, and we

012might have another bid package for some footings and foundations. And again, it all really depends on the, you know, we don't know what the scopes of the projects are yet, if it's, uh, additions or renovations or whatever the case may be. Uh, but all that is clearly defined. And then the thing, and I think we talked a little bit about this last time, but I just wanted to make sure that we make it clear again too, is that Myron is a union contractor, but when it comes to the con to the construction phase, we can work with non-US non-union contractors. So this, this scope of documents goes out to everybody, both union and non-union. It doesn't matter, you know, we can work with either. So from that perspective, if that makes sense. And then the

013other question, I guess that was it for two though, so any questions on number two besides that, And I apologize we're going through it pretty quick, but in 20 minutes we got a lot to cover. So Are there specific items pre-construction wise, like geo testing, stuff like that? Do you include that in your pricing or is that outside of, is that on owner For on The districts? How do you Well, I think it, yeah, sort of fits into this bucket a little bit. Um, a great question. Great segue into the next question. Yeah, the indirect cost or sometimes it's referred to as a, a soft cost would include, uh, the geotechnical, the surveying, some of those things. So those are typically, we'll say kind of below the line item things that we're tracking, uh, furniture

014would also be, uh, tracked within that. So that might be things that you might be contracting directly with, um, outside of kind of whatever contractual relationships you would have with Brea and or Myron. But again, we're tracking it as a holistic project. So yeah, you'll understand all the costs, but there might be some, like, another good example is under the owner allowances, like asbestos abatement. So, so we legally can't contract for any abatement that has to happen, but we help you through that process so we can get you the bids and that type of stuff. And we can manage that, you know, process and schedule it and everything. It's just that you have to own the actual contract. But same with furniture, technology is typically something that the district just handles themselves, um, you know,

015when it comes to that. But, but the big thing is that any of those estimates that you'll see, we're always gonna carry line items for all those costs because we don't want you to go to referendum for a dollar amount and say, you know, the referendum's 10 million, but oh, by the way, the district has another $2 million in additional cost that you have to incur. So we, it's all in there. Uh, and then we just, you know, we, we can work through who's responsible for what. Does that make sense? And I guess Wild Rose would be the example. 'cause they look like a similar size district in terms of students. There's a lot of handholding then. Like I feel like our district does not have like, someone on site who can be, be a

016general contractor part-time. Yep. Um, so that like, the, like labor around that is. Yeah. So as, as the construction manager during that process, yeah, we're holding your hands because you can get, wild Rose is a great example. They didn't have any, you know, they have a district administrator. I don't know if they even, I think they might have a controller. I don't know if they have a business manager or not, but not, uh, you know, just more custodial staff. So we, we help 'em through that whole process and manage that. Yes. I mean, we're working together, but, but help you with that. And, you know, hold, hold a majority of the contracts. There isn't much that you hold other than a couple of those little things. But even with that, it's not like you're on

017a, out on an island. We, we help you through that process. Make sense? Mm-hmm. Okay. Uh, let's cut. Uh, well maybe, I guess we didn't really in this one. So please provide detailed explanation of bidding process once the school, uh, begins the work and what scopes of work are included within your contracts and what are, what are not. So I just, uh, so the direct costs, so the construction material supplies, the labor, um, would be part of Byron's, uh, contract with you. Uh, raise fees would be, again, when we get to that percentage, but would be a percentage of the items in the blue bucket. And then again, there's, uh, indirect costs that we would track. Uh, we work with you on the budgets, both, uh, for indirect costs and potential allowances that we want

018to consider for the project. You'd work with us pre like referendum? Like to, okay. Yeah. We'll have, that's all built into, again, with those like the sheets you're looking at, we'll have, when it, when it goes to the public, I mean, they're not seeing that level of detail. They're just seeing probably big buckets of dollars for different scopes of work. But then all that is, is built into those costs so that we have the bond costs in there to general conditions, the general requirements. All that is built into those estimates. So I do understand exactly when all that costs. What general contingency rates do you use throughout the design and construction process? There's another slide that we're gonna show you in a couple next that sort of shows some of that where we, because we'll,

019it's sort of a step process. We start a little bit higher with the contingencies and then we're way down. We also, if you don't mind, we'll just, that's fine. Good question. Craig, can I just clarify with the FFFE in our bucket on the end also, you would work with us, so we would identify what we think would be a potential Cost for those. Yeah, you can talk a little bit about, you know, 'cause break can actually help you through that process if Yeah, yeah. We offer a design services for furniture or just help, uh, coordinate with a vendor if you have a great relationship. Um, but yeah, I mean, we talk about prioritization. If we're gonna do a library pro project, are you happy with the shelving that you have? Do you want to reuse

020it or are you happy, you know, with the cables, or some of these are on wheels, some are not. So maybe we're just replacing those and not these. So helping work through what those, those budgets, uh, would looks like. Thank you. And then those estimates will carry allowances for all that. So, you know, like if, if you're gonna do a tech ed expansion, we'd have an allowance in for tech ed equipment. 'cause you know, you might wanna buy some new equipment as part of that. Nobody knows exactly what that's gonna be yet, but at least carry a, you know, allowance for that. So, and then we help you do that. Okay. Yep. Um, so again, this is showing some of those summary things. This is an example from, uh, Wisconsin Rapids. And this is, it's

021sort of a condensed version of it, but it's showing you how we, you know, build the estimate for each component. In Wisconsin Rapids, of course, a little bit bigger districts, they have multiple schools that would be touched. You could see the different things. And the thing that we do is we always track on all of these projects is what the referendum value is like, which is the first column here. And then as you get into the design process, because ultimately you're gonna have a certain dollar amount that is going to be a, a successful referendum, and you can't exceed that dollar amount once you pass it. So we always have to make sure as Bray is starting the design process that we're always tracking pretty close to that. So you'll see it, it can occasionally

022go up and down a little bit as we go through design, but then ultimately at the end, once it bids out, you know, we wanna make sure that we're at least staying either after or below what the, what the referendum amount was. And you know, like here it shows the design fees, the design reimbursal, it has an owner items just in a lump sum here. But if we open that up, it would show like some furnishings and stuff like that. You wanna click again. Um, I think part of that is, um, question four now I think is the next question is just asking, you know, what are, what are our roles during the construction process between Gray and Wron? So I'll let Bray start. Yeah. So, uh, as the architect, um, we're still, um, and

023again, just just to be clear, we, we would organize separate contracts. So we would've a contract with you as the architect. Uh, Myron would've a contract with you as this construction manager while we're here today as friends. We think that offers a nice opportunity that we, we do challenge each other all through the process. During design, they say, you guys are nuts. That's too expensive. During construction, we say build faster, do too good work. Um, so we just wanted to outline again during construction, you know, we're past the bulk of our, our work, uh, during the design, but we're still attending biweekly owner contractor meetings. We're reviewing shop drawings. So, uh, the contractors will produce drawings that says, this is how we're gonna build it. And, and we benchmark that based on our designs, responding

024to questions, uh, creating revisions as necessary, and then reviewing, uh, the pay applications all through the construction process. And then our role during construction is onsite supervision. So you'd have full, I think we talked about this last time, we'd have a full-time superintendent. They wouldn't be on any other projects. They wouldn't be driving back and forth between Las and Athens or something. It'd be a full-time individual on site. Uh, then we'd have a project manager that would be, again, our project managers typically run a couple projects. So they, they would be here for the, the weekly job meetings probably, you know, here a couple times a week. They're not here every day. Um, but then that team, their responsibility really is maintain schedule and maintain budget. And then while doing that, make sure in our

025world it's called SQP, we call it safety quality production. To make sure that everything that we're putting in meets, you know, requirements, the district's requirements. Okay. This next slide, um, were there any questions on that? Who runs qa, QC for the architectural engineering services? Um, we have an internal process. We'll get to that in a little bit. Uh, we have an internal person that that's all he does. He's not doing production for the project. So we gave him the drawing name is Kyle. Um, and also we're sharing the drawings with, uh, Myron and, and and their team. Again, they're providing feedback. And again, I think the owners are seeing the drawings a lot too. That okay, I just weigh in on, on riser bathroom here, you know, but why, why we have this or that.

026So. Okay. Um, just I wanna talk a little bit about bid day too. 'cause that's something that Myron's really proud of is that we're very transparent during that process. So we want you as the district, if you end up having like a subcommittee of the board or a building committee that's involved in that process, we invite you to our office on bid day. We want you to help see the bid results come in, you know, help us select the subcontractors. We ultimately at the end of the project, this is Denmark's, but you know, you'll see a list at the end of, here's all the, where I talked about all different packages that we create. These are all the different things that we're getting bids on. It ultimately will show you who the sub is that's

027doing it. But I blew up a couple sections here too 'cause I thought it was nice to explain. Again, we talked about this last time that if you remember Myron, we talked about self performance. You know, there's some trades that we have the ability to do if it's masonry or concrete. We don't always do all that work though. So we have to go through a competitive bid process just like everybody else. So when you look at Denmark here, for example, you know, the masonry, we, uh, we actually, you know, we had a hind bid. We were actually low on that, but we bid against hind. But there's a up here on the, uh, concrete Myron bid it as well. But Northern Concrete was a low bidder, so they did the concrete work. So, you know,

028you just see, we, we will always share who all the bidders were in all the categories and stuff like that as well. So sometimes we do work, sometimes we don't. Ultimately we just manage the project. Um, and, you know, you never know what's gonna happen after bid day. Okay. Any questions on that? How do you handle overage or underage on bids? Do you have any threshold percentage wise that is it acceptable is and under the estimate? Yeah, I, and, and clin can speak to this too, I guess I always refer to bid day as a big bowl of soup that you're gonna see at times. All of a sudden, you know, your electrical might come in, you know, under budget. Your mechanical might come in over budget, but ultimately in the end, you still can't

029exceed that dollar amount that you can spend as a district. So, so there, I don't know if there's a threshold per se, but you know, we, we do scope 'em out right away too to make sure that, 'cause sometimes even on bid day, you get these numbers that, uh, in one category, you know, that might be a big spread between the low and the, the other one. And you're like, okay, somebody missing something and that, so there's a lot of work that goes in after bid day just to make sure. That's my, if there's, do you require justification on bids? Yes, absolutely. Yep. And even on bid day, we always ask the board, one of the things that we ask is when we leave our office on bid day, you don't go and tell Joel

030Joe Electric that, that he, he or she is a little better on electrical, because that might change after we scope the bids and understand exactly what they had in there. Maybe the second number actually ends up to be low, you know, so we just we're very careful with that on good day and to make sure that we're not giving anybody any false pretenses. Right. Okay. So again, going back to this a little bit, um, you said, uh, talked a little bit about, you know, how our fee is calculated. We, we did present this, uh, last time, but ultimately, uh, where the, the bids come back on bid day ultimately reflects. So if it, if it's a, say a 10 million, $500,000 project raise fee is 6% of that. And my RNs fee is, is 2%

031of that. And I guess the big thing with this one, again, that I just wanted to highlight is that, um, there's two aspects to this is the, it's the fee, and then when it comes to the construction side, it's also the general conditions and general requirements. And so it's gonna be important that you understand what you're paying for in that, because you will see big spreads. I mean, you'll see sometimes where somebody will come in with a very low fee, but then they're just gonna load up in their general conditions and their general requirements. 'cause they're gonna put five people on the job and you're gonna pay for every pencil and paperclip and stuff like that. You know, we treat it, we're very, uh, nominal in what we charge for our general conditions in those

032categories. And then, um, you know, an aggressive fee too. But it's just important when you start to do this final evaluation here. It's understanding the total package, you know, in that process. 'cause it, it can get, it can be a little hard to grasp all at a times. Okay, the next que Oh, what, that's fine. We can have too much of you talk. Uh, are we able to buy direct? Um, and the the short answer is yes. Um, and we didn't, we put all these things on here not to as scare tactics, but just, just so that you're, you're very aware that they're, they're, um, just because you do that doesn't mean it kind of gets you away from maybe some of the things you're trying to avoid. Um, you know, again, yes you can,

033but just again, if, if we're still designing it, so let's say you want to, uh, buy direct a piece of air handling equipment, our engineers are still gonna have to design that piece of equipment for the area that, that we're, we're, we're going within. Um, as I mentioned, you know, Denmark did a whole bunch of work themselves kind of before getting us involved. Another, uh, very typical for us. Sometimes districts will do the roofing part of the project on their own. And, and again, that, that works very well. Uh, but again, just just as we go through it, coordination, uh, you may still be required for, you know, payment performance bonds as part of it. Um, do you would save our portion of the fee on for some of those, or myron's fee on some

034of those. If there's not design or, or specific coordination, uh, delivery receipt and storage is another one. So again, uh, short, very short answer is yes, we do it all the time, but just just know there are some things to keep in mind for this process. Any other questions on that? Uh, as we talked about budget man management and change, change orders. So this was your question a little bit of QAQC. Um, you know, one of the things we do very early on in the process is create that, that preliminary project description. Um, again, when we, um, a lot of times early on we'll have floor plans. Um, you know, they're working on square footages or sometimes, um, you know, historic, um, industry historic information. But things like flooring, things like the type of roofing

035that you want and some of those other things may cause a, again, a huge swing in cost, like terra flooring, uh, costs a lot. It's a wonderful flooring. So the preliminary project description is a very early conversation we have with you to understand what, what some of the sacred cows, uh, you'd like to implement, uh, within the, the, the projects. Um, all of the engineers that we work with do a lot of schoolwork. They are very, very solid at budgeting. Don't, don't tell Craig I said this, but I trust their budget sometimes more than if they go out and get, get numbers, uh, 'cause they're living it every single day. Um, we are doing, uh, building this in, in, in our, uh, building information or Revit software. So again, we're able to do a lot

036of clash detection and find some of the, uh, challenges that before they see 'em out on site. Uh, and then again, collaborative approach. You know, escalation and inflation on top of contingencies has been something we carried, uh, within budgets and, and being mindful of that, while we're gonna budget this thing, you know, maybe in in spring for a fall referendum, it will not go out to bid maybe for even another year after that. So we need to be mindful of that. Uh, just real quick, again, we have a five step process as far as our internal, uh, quality control. So, uh, the gentleman in in our office, his name's Kyle, he's not working on the project other than doing QAQC. Um, so he's going, uh, through and taking a look at our drawing internally, uh,

037about five times in the process. So this gets to your question from a contingency standpoint. So when managing that process, is that, like we had talked about last time that we use to manage that whole process during all the meetings and discussions. But when it comes to the budgeting side, typically in the referendum phase, we're using a 10% contingency because they're, it's still very early, you know, there to get to referendum, you're only gonna have a schematic design 'cause you're not gonna want to pay BRE to do a full design until, you know, a referendum passes. So that's why we carry 10%. Then once we start to get in the referendum passes, we start to get into the design, start to get into the buildings more. We'll start to reduce that contingency as we get

038closer to, uh, bid day. So we'll go down to, you know, seven and a half on average. And then typically once we bid the project out, you'll typically still want to keep about 5% in there, especially if you're doing like a lot of remodeling and stuff like that. 'cause you never know exactly what you're gonna run into. But we'll keep that 5%. Again, it's your, the district's money. If it's not used, it goes back to you to pay for furniture or whatever, whatever the case may be. But it just, it's sort of that cushion for you. Does that answer your question? Yep. Then again, as far as change orders, how do you handle 'em kind of a breakdown? Um, again, sort of the idea of a trans or idea of a transparent process is we

039typically ident identify a challenge. So, um, I'll say a very typical no cost one is, uh, we said the ceiling's supposed to be nine feet. The, the, it's always the, the plumbing or the, the fire protection contractor gets in there first and then the, uh, you know, the electrical or the duct work can't fit below it. So we need to lower the ceiling. So that's usually a pretty simple one. We go through the process, we discuss, everyone's sat, it needs to drop six inches, uh, but we move forward. Usually that's a no cost. Um, one that might have a cost is, let's say we're demoing this wall here, we find out that there's a roof drain that we didn't know that that is penetrating through there. Uh, it wasn't on the drawings. It's, you know,

040we, we had no information that was there. So we, we take a look at it and talk through with you. Do we want to put an enclosure there and keep it there or do we want to move it? The decision is we want to move it. So again, we work with our team, we develop a set of drawings, we give the drawings to Myron, they will budget it, we bring it to you guys, uh, for costing yes, it's great, or no, that's ridiculous. And we move, move forward with, with that change accordingly. Again, the district's part of the process and aware of, of those costs. And just to the right, you know, the types of change orders we see are, are owner, uh, owner requested. So again, we hopefully, a lot of times those are

041positive in nature, whether it's, um, hey, we're the contingency, we haven't spent it, we'd like to add a bathroom or, or do something like that. Uh, drawing discrepancy again, have yet to see a perfect set of drawings. We do our best. But there, there are, um, again, some of those unforeseens or things within the drawings that maybe weren't fully coordinated and, and, and we worked through them. Uh, and then the unforeseen conditions are like the, the piping, uh, issue I just described. Can I ask a question? Yeah. So 10, I mean, if we have a $12 million project, 10% is obviously like a large amount of money. Yeah. But those change orders generally fit within those that the contingency, is that like your experience? Yeah, 'cause I mean, ultimately it really has to, because again,

042you don't, you can't magically find more money, you know, after the return has passed. So, so you really gotta, uh, or you know, there, there's times too if we have to, but if there's a big change that none of us had any control over, then we may just have to look at the project and say, where can we save a couple dollars? Because we still can't exceed that dollar loan. But, but yeah, we, you really don't ever wanna exceed that threshold that that was set. How often do you end up cutting portions of a project to be able to fit in budget for something that comes up? Is that common? I it's not, it's not too often in this process because that, that's why we appreciate that you're engaging the team early in the process

043that you're allowing us to, to understand, you know, work with 'em in the drawings, you know, see the site. Um, so I mean, I rarely, I, we don't have a lot of big, big issues. No, and I would say, but when that happens is, is sometimes when the huge shift in, you know, again, that huge inflation situation that just happened, we, we, we, we general have always kind of carried a smaller inflation, but, you know, for the massive inflation that we saw, nobody really could have predicted that. And if pre, pre some of those projects going into referendum, we said, Hey, owner, we need to carry 20%, uh, inflation on this. You would've said, no, that's, that's ridiculous. Again, you're saying 10%, you know, is maybe a lot. So it was, it is a very

044tough one. And again, I think we were very successful in, in finding ways to cut back on, on projects that did face that. Right now it's an extremely competitive bid market. We're seeing really good pricing and, uh, owners are getting really good value. So we look like geniuses right now and mm-hmm. And again, I think whether it's, it's that situation and maybe you have some extra funds to figure out, you know, if you wanna give it back to your community or, or invest it in the project, we obviously stay working with you on that. Uh, if it's the tough conversations, we stick with you and figure out a way to get it done. Okay. So then you'd asked about, um, how the payment process works. So we're just gonna highlight that for you, but we'll

045ahead. Sure. So, um, following a successful referendum, uh, again, the design team is, is engaging and starting their process. So we will begin billing following a successful referendum for our design services. Um, typically our process is about 85% of our work is done through the bidding phase. And then 15% of our work is, is through the construction. Uh, construction costs then aren't start don't start billing until they actually, uh, start doing the construction costs. So again, based on that design window, we have a schedule slide a little bit. Um, you might be 6, 8, 12 months, uh, uh, after the referendum that those are, I think the one thing is, you know, post referendum, we, we understand you work with RW b um, they will ask you for a payout projection. We have an example

046of that on the right here, where we basically try to go through and, and lay out how when the billing will occur through, through the duration of the project, um, for, for all areas. Yeah. Just to clarify, they won't be asking you for that. They will on your behalf, they'll be asking us to provide that payout projection 'cause we'll, we'll create that. Alright. Any questions about that? Um, so again, on on the project schedule, this, again, this would be completely negotiable, um, with you. I would say this is sort of a, a typical one. If, if we are looking at November of a successful referendum, we, we typically take, again, if, if we're building a new elementary, it's, it's a year long design process. If we're doing a new high school, it might be 18

047months to almost two years for the design of that. So I, I just kind of put here, um, given that maybe the, uh, a project would be to move the elementary over here about, again, about a, uh, 10 to 11 month, uh, design construction process, um, we can bid some things in the early process if it's applicable. Um, otherwise the entire project would bid in August and then roughly about a year, uh, to construct to have it done for the August of 28th school year. Um, so again, this is a, a very high level, not exactly sure what it, what a project would look like, but, uh, again, I say this probably fits most of what we're reconsidering for for district in terms of timeline. Makes sense. Okay. Okay. Now, Clint and I need to

048shut up. They saved me five minutes for my one slide. Um, but I know you guys did ask a lot about marketing and how that might be supported by our two teams throughout the process. So congratulations, you've done the first step, right? You're already engaging, um, whoever your design and construction partners happen to be, hopefully the team sitting in front of you. Um, but basically any good communications plan starts early with engaging your community and meeting 'em where they are. So we are ready to help you with some of the examples of deliverables that you have on the screen there. You're seeing denmark's examples, but know that we're going to meet Athens where Athens needs to be met. We're gonna create a completely customized communication strategy that helps your community members and taxpayers understand exactly

049what that referendum plan might be, and engaging the way that you guys feel is most necessary. So whether that's a community wide survey, whether that's a task force, whether that's a few, uh, presentations to your community in different areas, um, we have a full design and marketing team behind me, myself. Um, but I would obviously be there having, uh, having that up with you guys and working with you. Um, pre referendum on marketing materials. Um, any presentations that you guys want help with putting together slideshows, anything from a referendum button to a banner at a football game. Um, we've got it. We have a sign shop to print it, and we're there to help you guys, um, engage every, every taxpayer so that they're ready to go on voting day. Um, and then that, that

050fun, um, continues all the way through. So we pass that referendum, we're gonna celebrate with you, with Groundbreakings dedications, um, continuing to engage and inform your community because just because we're looking on the back end passing that referendum, there's not no dirt moving for like a year, right? So we wanna make sure that they understand, um, that we're still working, we're still excited, and then continuing to celebrate with 'em all the way through the ribbon cutting and dedication. I, I would say the most important thing with that one is that this is very painless for you because she and the team do everything from developing the schedules and printing and creating. And, and again, it's all based on what you think works in this district, but, but it, uh, we know you don't have all

051those resources in house, so Right. And we're ready to partner with whoever that might be, right? If you guys have some staff members that are helping on your engagement portion or if that's just you guys, as you know, as the admin team and the board, um, we're gonna, we're gonna partner with you and be be your people, um, to do those deliverables, to take that piece off your plate like Craig mentioned. Okay. Just a couple left. Uh, the risk management, you asked about, uh, insurance coverages. So in the world that we live in, we've got your standard liability insurance, uh, which I just have a copy of it up on the, on the slide there, so you can see that for the, the different things. Then the other piece to it is builder's risk coverage.

052Um, we really handle it. We say there's two options. Uh, either Myron can carry that or the district can carry it. I will say most of the time we carry it because we can typically get a more, a better rate than what the district can just because of the volume of construction work that we do. But we typically just have the conversation with the district and we both get, you know, costs and decide who wants to carry it. Um, and then last, what was a project that didn't go well? Um, so Black River Falls, we, uh, fairly recently just completed a, a second round of work for them. Um, a a number of fairly significant challenges, uh, on this one. Um, I'll say a few outside of our control and, and a few that we

053just, we had to deal with, um, as we went through. So number one was, uh, they had vandalism, uh, on their elementary project. It was about $1.2 million worth of, um, uh, damage. Uh, they sprayed fire extinguisher all over the building in the duct work. Um, and so right when we were about ready to turn it over. So, um, so obviously schedule challenges, um, getting the kids in the building, figuring out how to, how to get them in the building. And so again, we, we worked closely with the district outlined, um, you know, how this was gonna affect the construction, getting the projects started, um, obviously difficult conversations and, and a lot of, um, work on both sides to, to get it done. Uh, but we worked through it. Um, another challenge we had, before

054I get to the four, I'll talk about another one again, there was a couple different phases of that project getting complete. We built a portion of the building and I did some renovation, um, when we were, again, just getting ready, we were just doing the last bit of flooring in one area, and we found out that this two story area, the whole metal floor was essentially rot and, and probably wasn't, you know, gonna cave in that day. But it was very clear we had to re replace it. So again, that was a pretty quick one, uh, between Myra and our engineers, us to work through a solution, uh, to get it fixed. So again, we could, uh, meet some of the deadlines, uh, as we were approaching wrapping it up. And then the last thing,

055uh, has been an extremely frustrating ongoing challenge. Uh, it's actually started at Black River Falls. We've had it at a few other, uh, districts. So, but a, a specific type of, uh, rubber flooring. First of all, it was installed by a contractor that did a less than good job on the installation. So that was pretty much discovered right away, uh, at no cost to the owner, I believe was completely ripped out, and we got a different installer to put it in. Uh, in that process. Uh, we just had a lot of issues with, um, with the glue, uh, a hearing and some of the seams of what this particular floor, again, not unique to, uh, black River Falls. So a second time that it was ripped out. And, uh, again, no cost the owner and,

056and a sheet good, uh, material has put down. And I believe, uh, the latest report is that they're, they're happy with, uh, with the performance of that one. So again, pretty significant challenge. Uh, worked through it. Uh, got the work done during summers, you know, uh, breaks and, and, and spring breaks. Um, and, and again, um, worked through some of those challenges. Okay. I think that was it for the questions, right? I think we're right up. So now we're, uh, up to see what we missed on the referendum and support and communication. Yeah. Um, Any costs that go along with that is in an upfront fee that we pay with the feasibility study, There's no additional cost there. Correct. So the only aspect of that would be every, everything that we can print, we would,

057um, if the district so chooses to do like a district-wide mailer that would go to every mail, um, then the district would, would incur the cost of mailing that. Otherwise we do all the design costs, all the, all the internal printing of like posters, banners, that kind of thing. But it's completely up to the district as we're building out that customized campaign and the communications campaign. If you so elect to do a district wide mailer, we would talk about the cost and get you pri competitive pricing quotes and that kind of thing. Um, and, and that varies based on printers, based on how many district, um, mailboxes we're talking about. Um, but that would be everything else. Everything else. And is that in the, the fixed fee of $4,500? Yes. That was on that original,

058correct. Um, the patient you guys made? Yes. Okay. Can I ask another communication problem or problem? There you go. That's my, that's where you're at. That's where my mind is. Um, so when we're like engaging in that process, let's say we decide to go with you, but we're working on this right tonight. Yep. Um, right now we're talking about doing, we're creating our own materials for like, reflection on our past operational referendum so that people understand what that was and what's going forward. Um, I think we talked about this, although there was a lot that happened that like first night we had people present, right? Um, but would you be engaging with us on all of that together? Like so the campaign would Absolutely. You would help that kind of like pre referendum reflections about

059where we've been, where we're going, that whole like, setup. 'cause I think that's where we're kind of working internally now, but trying to Sure. Yeah. And I think I might have shared the example of Sparta. We actually helped breaks on things, go to operations first. We assisted them communications for that and successful great. We, we wanted to be a consistent message from the district, right? We wanna create that brand that's very recognizable throughout your entire process, whether that's including an operational, um, starting, you know, starting from the 10 years ago history. We want to tell that story to your community so they're understanding the entire process that led them to today and why there's a question on your ballot. So you have really good language about understanding why the state funding formula doesn't serve rural

060communities. We sure do. That's the problem. You're unfortunately not alone in the state of Wisconsin. I'm aware of that. So we get to tell that story a lot. And, um, I'm sorry that you have to tell that story, but yes, we'll help you tell that story in very simple, easy to understand terms. Um, and Baird also does a wonderful job of helping to really articulate that story to, to taxpayers, but yes. Yep. We're here with you on that one. That the whole communication strategy and what you're gonna do is really runs parallel to the, the facility study and the design, because it, it will be, it would be separate meetings, you know, separate discussions because you know that it is just a whole animal in itself. Yeah. So they would both run at the same

061time. Yeah. And, um, we, we would love to take that off your plate so you're not doing it alone. Right. Um, so I hear you, you know, as you're building these pieces now, we, we would love to help assist that with that. That's our job all day, every day. That's what we do is work with districts like Athens. Um, and to help tell that story so that you guys aren't stressing about the next print deliverable. You're worried more about the strategy and, and which community members you need to talk to, that kind of thing. Does that help answer those questions? Any other communications? I love answering. Any other questions or? Good. Thank you so much for your time tonight. Yep. No, you're welcome. Again, appreciate it. Just let us know if there's anything else so

062we can, uh, answer down the road. Thank you so much. Thank you. I earlier great to you guys. You thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Have a great rest of Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Hot. Thank you very much for your time, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks again everybody. Yep. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of the night. Thanks for coming to Thanks a lot. It. Thank you. No, but he's the one that, Did he steal your commission? He had it and they tried to give her f**k me with the deal. He emailed, they couldn't, so they had to change my time To Oh, really? Took month In my job before I, I could actually get emailed. No way. Well, I know, I'll have to get him punch in the,

063he's Probably gotten some emails intended for me that he's received. That's too hard. We had to ask him. Have a great night. Same trip. The dress code. So there were people. Thank you. Welcome Jim. Welcome Jerry. Nice to have you back with the performance services. So once you settle in, you're welcome to do formal introductions. Got about a half hour time for presentation and Questions. Great. Good Evening everybody. Good to see everyone again. Jim Wheaty and Jerry Ick. Performance services. Um, I thought we just get started. Uh, we kind of talked about who we were last time. Um, this one's a little unusual. You had a lot of questions. We got 'em down. We sent you a lot of material. Yes, you did. You want the homework assignment? We, We did. I thought everything that

064be needed. Um, I think, and I wasn't really sure how to put this presentation together because there's a lot of questions. So I figure we'll just go through your questions. Um, the answers, most the answers are in your packet, but some are up here. So, uh, I think we can just start going. Um, so first question was, you know, give you a, let's see if the feasibility study. So we gave you a couple that we had. We also showed you one that we did for Athens, uh, back in think 0.1. Um, now that has changed, I'm sure. Um, but it gives you an idea that we kind of know your buildings. Um, our architects and engineers have walked through buildings many times, uh, came up with some ideas back then. They were good. Not sure

065if they're good now. Um, they felt with some different ideas. I'm not sure. So, um, let's see. No. Okay, So let's see. Number two, long as I feasibility study reports and quotes, please provide a sample of special provisions. So wasn't sure exactly what you're asking for here. We gave you some contracts, um, subcontracts, uh, schedule value. I wasn't, I think, I think that's what you wanted. Yep. Is that what you're looking for? That's what I was looking for, yeah. Okay, perfect. We gave you a lot. So I'm not sure if you want to go through all that. Uh, that was some heavy reading. Um, but we do show that we minimize any of the gaps that, again, it's apples and oranges. You guys are in know, you're talking to, you're talking to, uh, an architect

066and a cm and then you're talking to a design building. Okay? We're a little different. Um, we do minimize the gaps. So I don't care who we are out there. If you're architecting the cm, there's gonna be a gap somewhere where the school gets held responsible for something. So we try to cover all those. Since our guys are designing it, our guys are implementing it. Um, if there is an owner, we take the hit on that, which we have a a a few times we've talked about that. Some of the, uh, the issues that we have, some of the, the 40 page lists that we have. But we try to minimize that with us and our contract show that, Uh, the bidding process, we do use notebook pricing. Um, we've talked about that before, where

067we get, uh, bids from local and, uh, other people. I, I was thinking about this today. I, I went through a, uh, something, I don't know if we talked about, we do a postmortem for every project we do. So it's internal. So if we do a project with your school neighbor next door, we just finished it. We get everyone together, our architects, our engineers, project managers, controls team, uh, management. Everyone found out what went well in the project, what went wrong. Uh, and when we talk about subs, we have a whole list of who are the good subs who had issues, and why do we have issues with 'em? And let's put a star by their name. So next time we know these guys are very non detail oriented. So if we're gonna use 'em

068again, if the school wants to use 'em, let's make sure we're getting really details on them. So I was just thinking about that today as we're going through that meeting. So usually don't say when we talk about subs, uh, we make sure they're vetted, but we also make sure if we've used 'em before, what was great about 'em. And some of 'em, uh, we just used one. Our guy couldn't talk more highly about 'em. Uh, and they're great. And so they've been great on two projects now that we've done. So obviously we'll make sure we use everything we process again. Can I add something on that? Yeah. Um, just in seeing some of the other companies that, that have, uh, come in here to speak to the district, I did want to just highlight, um,

069we're a company, our structure isn't built on self-performing work. So there are many firms out there, um, where their procurement method is based on self-performing work. And what I mean by that is maybe they're gonna do some network carpentry work, they work statewide. Um, and a big benefit I think we offer, um, that our competitors don't is the fact that since we don't self-perform work, um, you're not gonna be jeopardizing getting the best deal. Because a lot of the companies, if you have a construction management firm that comes in here and does self-performing work, um, there's gonna be subs. Are they gonna be as active bidders knowing that they're gonna be working under a firm that works statewide? Um, so something to keep in mind, again, just the competitive nature, uh, of the business, we're

070able to maximize it for you. Yeah. Thanks Jerry. The other thing I didn't mention, we're talking about feasibility studies and facility studies. We talked about this before, but we don't charge districts for that. And that that is part of our owner's belief. And I know you're thinking, okay, you don't get something for nothing. Right? But our owner absorbs these costs. The way we can do that is we have our own architects and engineers and project managers on staff. Another firm doesn't have their project managers that are bidding it. They got their architects and they don't have their engineers. So that's another firm that they have to pay to walk the buildings and do the mechanical work. And that money's gotta come from three different companies. Who's paying for that? Someone's gotta pay for it. Even

071it's a little bit. Now when it gets to referendum support, we don't charge you for that either. But if that does pass, then we highlight that in open book space. Say it's usually a 10 to $12,000 cost. It depends how many hours our team puts in. Uh, and you can see that hourly. So we do charge you that if you win, if we win, if we don't win that referendum, there is no charging ticket on that. So I just wanna go back to that on how we don't charge. And we didn't charge it for this study that we've done and we didn't seen it a few years. So, um, we don't do that for any of our school districts. So our owner absorbs that cost into, into, uh, his, um, tally. So scopes of work

072we do it all. The only thing we don't do is hazardous materials. Some asbestos. We leave that the school district to do. Legally you have to do that yourself. Or if there's any hazardous materials, everything else is under one contract that's under us. Can I ask you a question about that? Sure. So if it's not in the contract, is it still in the overall financial plan? Explain that to you. Refer We we're going to referendum. Yep. And theoretically you're helping us put together the whole scope of work. Yep. If there's asbestos, we still have to deal with it. Yeah. Um, and it has to be covered by the referendum. So how does that work for those specific parts? So usually our guys walking the buildings can tell if there's asbestos around piping or something like

073that. That's probably, and if we're doing this, so we'll leave portion of that out. They'll know before the referendum, before we get our hands dirty, they're gonna know if you have asbestos or not. I'm sure you have an old asbestos report you've done in the past. Maybe, maybe not. If not, our guys know that that's hot. That's not hot. If we're renovating this area here and we've looked above ceiling and they know those pipes are hot wrapped to asbestos, they're gonna know that and put that aside. Does that help? And we'll know that additional costs at the time of going referendum. So that can be included in there. That would be brought up, yeah. Okay. And that's, that's something that's down, down, uh, a lower slide, but I might as well talk about it now

074since we're talking about taking things out. You question if you could buy things. Yeah. You can buy as much stuff you wanted. I would hesitant to see what you wanted to buy. Um, I'll give you a couple examples. One of our, uh, smaller referendums we've done, there was a line for, uh, clx PA systems. Um, and what's, I think that's a, um, and maybe some wireless remote stuff. Well, but, and we budget it all out for 'em. This is what it's normally gonna cost us. Normally gonna cost a different school district. Uh, when we got down to it and we passed the referendum, we got down to the money and we started to bid it out before we bid it out. The school district said, you know what? These clocks are fine. The battery operator,

075our guys don't mind changing the batteries. We're just gonna put all new of those clocks up. Our facility guy's gonna take care of that. And we got a lady that works for us that can do the, so take that $150,000 out and we're gonna do our own. Okay. What happens there? It's a contract amendment. So we get $150 budget for that. We take that out, whatever it cost you, or you just take that outta the contract. We sign new amendments. Less what? Tutorials. Does that make sense? Mm-hmm. So yeah, you can buy things if you have easier way to do things. Furniture's a big thing. We'll help you with furniture. We don't bring a lot of value into furniture. I mean, I've helped interview three or four firms for furniture. Um, but for the most

076part, the school district's gonna do that. So we'll take that. Let's say we budgeted 400,000, of course. Uh, take that out of the contract, do an amendment for the contract and everything. So that's how we, you're welcome to buy things. You're welcome to do things like that. We just take it out of our contract. So our role in construction, we are the design builder. Um, again, we have our architects, engineers, we manage the project. Uh, we make sure we hit all the deadlines. None of our subs have subs. None of our subs buy equipment. We buy all the equipment. Safety doesn't work. Who buys the two by fours? Nuts and bolts and wiring. Two by fours. The mechanical, whoever, whoever we hire for that portion of the project. Uh, I'm talking big things that'll save

077you money. Gotcha. Um, like little stuff like that. It wouldn't, it wouldn't benefit anybody. Um, but air handlers, chillers, boilers, big items, steel, things like that, not steel. Um, those other things we would buy, we bid that out of course. So again, we don't have, uh, uh, we don't have a favorite. I mean, we tell you who we'd like. If you guys are using train in all your, I don't remember what you guys are using. We would suggest keep using training since it's, but we'd also bid out taking care of other, other brands as well to make sure everyone's honest. Right. Let's See. So we do bid it out. I was gonna say, uh, we bid out everything. We buy the equipment. Um, our 3% is our fee. Our a engineering is usually five to

078seven. Now, that can go down. If it wasn't, we just finished a project at Fenimore High School for 17 million. Refer number all in our architect and engineering fee was 4%. Um, and we don't, this is a little confusion. We don't make up 3% off our 45% that goes to local. So you'll have your total, once everything's bid out and they don't book pricing sheet, you're gonna have, this is gonna choose a b, c company for this one. We're gonna choose them. Gets totaled at the bottom. That's your total construction cost, right? Then what you're got 3% on that. And then at the total, at the bottom of the line is your, uh, architect and engineering fees. We're not making money off our own costs, if that makes sense. I just wanna make sure that

079was right. And then again, what we're saying, we buy, we buy the equipment directly. It saves a lot of layers of makeup, of markup to the district, which in some cases is hundreds of thousands of dollars. I've seen Change orders, big topic. We don't have it ever ask any of our, any, any one of our projects. And it's in our contract, if you saw it. There's no change orders. So how do we work with change orders? We don't do it. Now, if there's a change in scope, we're gonna bid it out just like we did on book pricing. And it's just gonna go the same way. But change orders. No change orders. And if you look at any other construction project, but us, it can be in the six to eight, sometimes 10% change orders.

080I've seen 10 right now. They're trying to lower 'em. 'cause they're going, they're seeing us with no change orders. They can't figure out how we're doing it. So it's sometimes four to eight, but still 8% on a 10 million project, it's $800,000. That's like, wow. So that's true. Even if you like, knock out a wall and find something that's on us. Okay. Yeah. And I can tell you a couple times where we got hit, uh, head, um, Or it was probably a hundred thousand dollars hit that we had to take that. We'll never do that again. It was in our, it was in our post-mortem that we did today for that, for that, uh oh. There's nothing we could have done. It was, um, we put in new air handlers and with the change the

081fon, it wouldn't be you all listed and it was just a, a big deal. But still it's a hundred thousand warning. Once we get down to that number on that pricing sheet, and it's, I keep using 10 million because it's easy. It's $10 million. It's $10 million. So if it goes over, that's on us. If we find a way to bring it under you, get that one back. So you guys don't have any varied costs anywhere for unforeseen. We have contingency. So, and I have that up here. Let's see, again, we do all the work up front. So we don't have change orders, but our contingency is usually around five, three to 6%. That's for unforeseen stuff that's out there. You know, you have some old building, you have an old building. If we find

082something that's varied that we didn't know, it's gonna come out of contingency. Okay. And it's usually around three to 6%. Um, you get to see the contingency log from our project manager. We can't use it unless you say, yep, Jim, that's fine. Yeah. Uh, you know, there's a very left pipe. So I don't know something that's not supposed to be there or unforeseen, uh, circumstances. So we're gonna talk to you and say, we're gonna use part of this, and here it is and here's why. It's all gonna be written out in form. We need to see it. You can just say yes or no. That's where, uh, unforeseen circumstances come from. Does that make sense? Again, you'd see over pricing, you'd see a contingency list. Um, But the other thing is we tell ourselves there's

083no change orders. So in the contract, so a lot of times they can go, okay, we're gonna bid this low, but we're gonna get some change orders in there. So let's say we're gonna bid it a hundred thousand dollars when it really should be 120. We're gonna bid it a hundred. We're gonna 'em for 20% change orders. We'll get our money back. So they know we don't take change orders. And our drawings are so detailed and they're spot on and you're working with one guy that they're gonna be like, oh, okay. So Scope change. I talked a little bit about that. If you guys decide, okay, chip, since you're there, let's get another classroom on that. We'll just put one more, let's scope change. You're gonna have, you're gonna have a huge definition of scope

084of what you're getting and everything that it covers. And then at the very end, you're gonna get a turn page, a page turn. So we're gonna take blueprints. We're sit with you, whoever wants to show up, and we're going through each page. Here's what we're doing. Here's what we're demoing. Here's what you're getting. Here's everything. Here's where the outlet's gonna be. Here's everything. Now something comes up that's not in our scope and we didn't agree upon it. You say, well, I'm there. And sometimes we can take that. We'll have a a, a owner's directing allowance. That'll be in that home book pricing sheet. Let's say as a board, you say, you know what, Jim put 50,000 aside or a hundred thousand in case we see something we won't do. We just make sure we have

085it in there. Right? Then we'll use that. Or if there's a scope change again. But while we're doing something, you're like, well, that'd be great if we had this over here, guys, we don't even talk about that. We'll, so we bid it out to the people who are in the mechanical person or the construction. We bid that out. You can see the numbers. Again, go through that whole system again. I was gonna add, um, for a company that has change orders as well. I keep in mind if you have change orders, often you're gonna be adjusting the scope. Um, which is, you know, you go to ballot to your public to say, this is what we want. You get a bunch of change orders and, and Jim identified some of these large amounts potentially that

086could happen. You're gonna have to change the scope on what you want to the voters for. They're, they're going to, they're gonna, the, the project they expect is gonna be modified. So something to keep in mind. And again, a benefit with our approach of no change orders, you don't have that risk. Again, we designed a budget, talked a little about that. Our financials, uh, I think we gave you our financials, our insurance and our bond capability and things like that. Um, we do start, uh, once the referendum is passed and once we sign the contract, uh, then we have a mobilization fee. It can be talked about, depends on the form we play with. And then we just have a, um, a draw schedule, which we will work with you. We work with many schools

087in their financial institution, whether it be BAIR or PMA or whoever you're working with. 'cause sometimes once you get all that money, now you're investing it. You're like, Jim, I can only pay so much. And then we work with them. We're like, all, well, the draw's gonna be here. I'm not doing any work in January, February, so they're not gonna be much coming in. So keep that, you're getting more interest out of things like that. We work with you on the draw schedule. This is an example of a schedule that we talked, that we worked on for this project. Um, it's aggressive, uh, but we've done it many times with different school districts. So, uh, 1116 of 26. So that's if you went for referendum in November of next year and it passed. Okay, here

088we go, design and engineering. Then we have site work and then boom, boom, boom. You'd be done by school of 8 28. Okay, that's, that's aggressive. Um, we've done this for Wisconsin Heights. This was the exact schedule that passed in November. Uh, we had designs, we had bids. They were in school by start of 22. We had competition in that one who was someone that has either been in this room or gonna be in this room. Um, and they guaranteed them to start school by August, 2023. Public know out there, uh, that's a whole year. That took them longer to do. So our speed of delivery is incredible because we're all on the same team. They can't guarantee when the drawings are gonna be done by the architect. And the architect can't guarantee when they're

089gonna get started. 'cause they're two different companies with two different p and l statements with two different marketing teams, two different everything. We're one team, again, making phone calls, getting stuff done right away. So a whole year, especially during COVID is millions of dollars, Right? So that's just a real world, real world example. And these were some of the dates and budgets we had for that. Um, based on design, interior finishes, just everything in there. It's in your packet really into it. Now, none of this works unless you pass a referendum, right? That's the big thing. So we have a complete referendum team to help you do that. Whether it be graphic design, community engagement, um, backpack take home flyers, anything you can think of. We have that on our team. We actually, the person

090who helped you pass your operational run front of it's on our team. So she knows your administration staff, she knows your community, she knows your team, which is good. She's great at what she does. So she's on our team for the referendum help as well. So Can I ask a communication question? Sure. What, uh, because you don't charge us, which is Yes. Um, what is provided with communication support? Like is the printed everything? Is this Yeah. Is there something We don't do stuff that's, is there stuff that's not, we don't do things that say vote Yes. 'cause that we do informational stuff. So we will do, we will help with, uh, yard signs, but as long as it says vote, just because, you know, we're, we're here for informational help. We'll help with printed signs,

091we'll help with backpack, take home flyer, big boards that go up in community places around here that just fax tell facts. Right? And we don't charge for this, but at the end of the day, if we do pass, it's right between 10, 12,000 charge whatever. Uh, our, our team's hour cost was Direct mail. We pay postage. Yeah. Okay. Um, and the other only thing we don't do is surveys. So we work with sub school perceptions. We work with them hand in hand. We give 'em all of our graphics, all of our information, all the costs, everything like that. I think they're good. They're good at what they do. I think it's beneficial. I think you should do it. Um, there is a cost of that. Um, you also have video too, I would add. Oh

092yeah. Services. So, um, that's something a lot of districts have utilize with us and we've even gotten students involved with that for the whole great point. Thank you. Uh, and I'll send, if you wanna see 'em, they're on YouTube. They're great. Uh, we have professionals that do the videos. That pictures worth a thousand words. Right? The community needs to see why. Big thing Do like a Ruth is about to leak Pictures. I have my superintendent pulling the hose out of the ceiling into a bucket. It's like guys. And then I have one where there's two little screw. I take a bus, the red bus to here, then I take a yellow bus to get the blue bus home and it takes me 55 minutes to get home. And that's when we combine school buildings. And

093our bus trip was at only 20 minutes. That seven lot. Uh, the community wants to know what's gonna cost me and what am I getting for my money. Right? So videos, great Call Jerry. Videos are great and we'll be happy to sign you up. We have tons of that. We've done really impactful. Yes. That's included. Yes. And a complete reference strategy timeline. You're good. If you, if you're looking at November of next year, your grade a different April the year after your grade, um, I think you're, by the time this goes, so once you select someone, it's November, December. You start in January, February, start taking it off. You get a survey going in the spring. We have a year. So I think a year's Good. Going back a little bit to some of the

094earlier slides, what, where does something like winter conditions fall under our contract with you guys? Tell me more about that. Snow removal. Yep. Uh, things like that. That's included. Yeah. I mean we foresee that the last couple winters have been great. So we've actually gotten a lot of work done. Um, but that's just either on us or our subs. Temporary heat, stuff like that. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's all included. Okay. Yeah. In the same van, do you run a working day contract, a completion day contract? What type of contract do you typically run with the subs? I dunno that question. Okay. Uh, so tell me a little bit more about that. So I get the answer. Well, you can have a working day. You have, whenever you start, you have 45 working days. Oh, be

095your task. Or you have to be completed by August 24th. I think we have guidelines from, if we don't, we put a note on 'em and says, if you don't get it done by this time, we're gonna take your bond. Something like that. It's gonna be placed in the special. Yep. Just checking it. Just case. Yeah. Right. That if for some reason Sun's going way off the rails with a sub and they're, they haven't been here and they're supposed to get done, they, so we have weekly meetings in the trailer and all the subs that are jury, like, if we don't have sub working for a couple months and they're, everybody else is in there, you're welcome to join any, you guys are welcome to join. Um, it's weekly. It's usually on a Tuesday or

096Monday. And we're, okay, this is what we're doing for the week. Make sure you clean up after yourselves. You know, I want this done by this. And if they don't hit it, okay, then next week, why would you on this? Why don't you do this? If they keep missing 'em and we're gonna put a letter to him and say, well guys, you, you gotta come over the weekends, come at night, get it done. So that's kind of what we do. Our guys, we're on it. We usually have a, on a job like this, we'll have at least a project manager and a field superintendent. So the project managers oversee the big things. A field superintendents in the grind with everybody, right? Walking day to day, finding out what's going on where. So Again, we're assuming

097the risk. I told you about that if it does pass, then we're gonna charge it. If not, we're we're assuming the risk on that. Um, insurance just standard. Never had an issue with that. Um, here's something I want to talk about that I hear all the time. 'cause there's not many of us out there in this stage, but once we go up against the competition, we always talk about, uh, either checks and balances or the fox watching the hen house or something. Or who's watching these guys. They're just the only ones. They're doing it for you. Okay? Here's the deal with that. Our architects are licensed and they're stamping the drawings with their stamp. Right? The other guy's, the architect in stand, that architect is stamping the drawings with his license, right? You have to

098be behind that. Our construction manager is working with our architect, making sure it's done and done right. And we're working with the school district to make sure it's done, done right. You're gonna see that. The other thing we do is we survey you four times during the year during the project. So in the beginning, the design phase over 25%, 50%, a hundred percent done. And they can be either the superintendent, the facility director, whoever's part of the project. How are we doing? Give us a rating real quick. Are we doing okay? We're meeting our expectations. Yes, no. Yes, no. If we get something lower than a good or a good or lower and it's not outstanding or excellent, it goes straight to our owner and it runs down the chain. Everyone, you get a phone

099call right away, what is going on over there? Why isn't it excellent? The other thing we're doing is we are coming back after that first year and making sure the project is right, whatever it is. Is it humidity? You know, and we're sweating in the building. What's going on in that room? You guys just did all the HVAC. What's happening? We're back here when the boilers turn out, we're back here when the air conditioning turns down. We're back here four times during that first year completion. The whole way around, making sure it's right. If you ask someone else and it's sweating or boiling, who are you calling? Are you calling the architect? Are you calling the cm or are you calling the, who, who am I calling to make sure it's right? We're guaranteeing for

100a year. No one else is guaranteeing. Right? Anything else that jury? No. Well, okay, so that's where it's, you know, who's overseeing them. So if there's an issue with their design, construction manager's not gonna call up the architect front. Everybody, their partner, they, they'll never get a call back to come to this interview. Uh, it should, it is, you know, we guarantee it's gonna go right and if we don't, it's on us and we're gonna fix it. Very. Right? We also have a customer service portal. And I don't think anybody else has, 'cause we're one company. So you're welcome to the portal if there's an issue, and it could be the smallest of things, uh, portal, uh, uh, an electrical plate isn't put on in room 2 22 goes into the portal. Everyone a part

101of this project gets to see it. Our management team gets to see it until it's fixed and it goes through the portal. This is, I'll have it fixed in a day. It's been fixed. The plate is on. And that can be from anything from that side. Small too. Uh, heating and air conditioning issues where our guys can tap into your system, our controls team and make sure, oh, the damper's not open in room 12. Why not? Let's fix that. Let's get someone out there and fix it. So that's the other thing. Um, we have a portal system that you try getting something fixed and calling someone in. Good luck. I've seen it a hundred times this. They just type it in. It's your team, it's, you have access to it, you type it in, you

102ask the questions, it gets fixed right away. Or you get an answer. They're gonna be out there next week. They're coming out next week, they're gonna have that fixed. Thank you. That's all you needed, right? So the portal's another great thing about our company that we have, uh, issue resolution. So I thought of this one, um, because I thought it was cool. We had a big issue. So this, this was that aggressive timeline that we put on yours as well, that we had to get school to open, uh, by September. And this was a brand new elementary school that we did for him. And it was a go or no go come, I think it was May or June. And Jordan Sims was superintendent, said, Jim, you guys are good. I said, yeah, it was

103during COVID. So some things were hard to find. It was rough on those days. Um, and he said, yeah, we're ready for August. Well come July. The electrical panel, the giant little giant panels that we were putting in, and I don't know the details, that's my pm but I remember being part of it, couldn't get it. They said it was gonna be there. Then they said it was gonna be there next week, and now I'm starting to not sleep at night going, your son gonna be there three weeks ago. And my project manager's going, Jim, if it doesn't get in by next week, we can't get it in. They're not gonna have electricity. You can't start school. So I said, Joe, what's your second? We need a plan B here. I I I don't have

104you said it was gonna be open. I did. Okay. We scoured the country. So we have, we're in 15 states. 15 states who called all of our project managers, sent an email out to all them, find this, we need to find this panel. And we were able to find it in, uh, Fort Wayne, Indiana. Little guy had two extra ones. We were able to use it until we can get the real one in. Got school open. Nobody knew any different, everybody was happy. Um, but just, those are our capabilities. We can look all across the country for things. We have great buying power. Um, it just turned into a great thing, which was very scary. But we make sure it gets done. We had a whole company working on this project. These pictures are in

105our, uh, corporate office in Indiana. Um, because this, it showed our great teamwork that we had. Those are some questions answered. I know you have more. Would love to hear 'em. Since you are in-house design, who does qa, qc on your design efforts? We have two other, uh, uh, architects. So we have two, we have an architect, we have two architects in Indiana that do that, that take a look. I wanna make sure they're right. Good question. Makes sense. Construction fee, is that washable? No. We, we used to be a 5%. And then just to explain the differences that we have between a, I mean, a scam can get down to two. They get down to one and a half and they make their money elsewhere. They make their money on rental equipment. They make

106their money in cranes, they make their money. We don't, we don't make our money anywhere else. So we don't make our money on our architect engineering at all. That's usually our cost. That's why I said it could go around 4%. That's what was our last one. It's how much time they're gonna spend on the job. How much time do they have to spend on the job. So that is as low as we can go. I mean, we used to be at five and four then too. Think we can go three. It's just three. That's, that's just what our fee is. Contingencies At the end of the project are ours to keep. Yeah. Okay. And so if you look at fees only, it is tough because you can say, well, it's super, they're only 2%. Well

107what about everything else you get? You're getting the guarantees, you're getting the no change orders, which are five, six 80%, uh, which is a big number. Speed of delivery, big number. We can get the done project done faster. It's gonna cost you less. Who does your general conditions? But, you know, put up the safety defense. Who that's in our general conditions. Yeah. Who does that? Our project managers, our superintendents, they do it themselves. They'll have a fencing company or someone come, always do a bathroom or a port potties. They have their regular guys. You got the tele on site. You guys are renting that. Yeah, the trailer there, the fencing, the security. We have a safety team we never talked about. Yeah. That comes out to the project. Make sure everybody's in their gear, make

108sure they're wearing hats. Uh, if they see a violation, they're gonna call it out. Um, we're, I don't think we've had any safety issues in, in whatever, but we have our own Four or five safety people that are hired by us that hit all the projects in all the states and they come out and make sure they're everything right. I'd also offer too, we, um, try to, uh, work it in with the curriculum that the district wants us to, uh, based on trainings right now. Uh, so that's something we take a lot of pride in and, um, have our teamwork with students is they actually have a program. Yeah. Bring 'em up in the rough if we're doing that or Yeah. Yeah. I mean that's all organized with you obviously and your teachers and, um,

109what, how deep they want to get into and what they want to see in the hard heads. Our marketing team has all the groundbreaking ceremonies, the ribbon cutting, you know, everything else that would go along with a typical project. And like equipment. We can hand pick contractors. Yes. No, maybe so. Okay. Yeah. Uh, and that's a great story. I pulled that story. We, we can, we can break it down since we're designing. We can break it down if you guys need your contractor to have a shot at it and smaller. We'll break down that piece if we can. We'll break down that piece so we can do it like our, I talked about that boiler story where, uh, Southwestern we had their, uh, HVAC guy. He wanted to do a piece of it, but it

110was a million dollars and he couldn't handle it. So we just broke out the boiler. He installed three boilers there, a couple hundred thousand. He was happy with it, but he was happy, which made the superintendent happy, which made everybody happy. And he was a big booster, a big donor. So, and then a huge HVC customer got the whole boil the plant and the whole piping and all that stuff. So, um, the other piece of that is we can not give out bids to guys. You don't want to be in here. Um, no offense to them, but if they didn't do a good job hearing, you don't want 'em in here. We just don't invite 'em to, to bid. What does, what does bid day or bid opening look like? Who's involved? Who's not Involved?

111So the project managers are involved of vetting all the bids, getting all the bids in, making sure they're all right. We put 'em into that own book pricing sheet. I highlight all the yellow ones, which are the lowest, but then we go through it. This is up to you. What kind of team do you want? Facilities team. It's usually what I do. Uh, it's usually, uh, the superintendent and a facilities team. And then we go through it and say, okay, these are the lowest, but let's go through each one. Here's why they didn't bid in our project manager to go there for you. Uh, they didn't have enough guys, so they put no bid on there. Um, this guy was super low. We vetted him. He said he is super low. He's there. So we're

112gonna hold him to that. But if you know, and, and I'm telling you most of the times it's not the cheapest guy. It's the guy who we think does the best work and they're good for you guys and you like 'em and they're only $5,000 more. But you're gonna get that out of their work. What if we pick a guy that doesn't turn out for your contract? That happens all the time. They don't even show up. They're, and so we'll put down, hey, we've called him four times, or, and then here's our two emails and we'll show 'em to you. You want, you don't want to bid. So that happens more than you can imagine. But when this gets done, I'm gonna ask Andrew to make sure she sends an email out to all you

113guys and say, here's, here are the packages. So we need an electrician, we need a mechanical what, or just send your guys some guys, you know, Tom's painting heart, we're not gonna, but some of those guys are great too. Um, but we make sure our PMs vet them to make sure they can first of all handle the work. Right, right. Uh, make sure they don't have guys, here's when we need you to work. Are you gonna be busy? What's your schedule look like? Then can you come in and do the work? So they get all that work done behind the scenes, which is great for me. But you guys, you get to get to see it. And then, so they'll be a part of this bidding as well. 'cause they're gonna know every inch of

114these guys, I talk to 'em all the time, they're gonna know, okay, these guys are high, but if you combine 'em, they're gonna do both the HVC and uh, the insulation or something. And if you combine 'em, they're cheaper than if we have two different people doing it. So let's put them together. Okay, great. And they'll explain it. It makes it easy to explain. They do all the hard work beforehand. You get to see it. And, uh, yeah. That's great. And then same thing with equipment. Our engineer, mechanical engineer will be there and say, all right, well we think you should use this one. Uh, because it fits better without the curve or whatever. They'll give you engineering way that I, I, I know just enough to be stupid. So, um, they'll tell you all

115that stuff and why he thinks you should use this chiller if you need a new chiller. Or you know, why are we using a screw chiller? Well, it's, well why, why not? This type of showing all the information. Other questions. Gotta do one more. He did like give us a lot of information, right? Yeah. Very helpful. Oh good. I figured he had 10 days. I said, well, let's give it to him. They'll read it. Thank you very much. Yes, Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate Coming in Again, thanks for your time. Thanks for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you. Questions? Great questions guys. Thank You. Thanks. Appreciate, thanks for your time. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks guys. Thank you. Trip water. Let's just, let's go really past it's really fast bathroom. Very, the thanks coming. Appreciate

116it. Yeah. So installation I can get from Cole for 38 Bucks. Yeah, It's all good. From north. We still Yeah. Es looking at, write me down. Okay. Yeah, try. Oh, they got everything. Nice. Yep. And uh, Becky will get it up for you in just a moment. Okay. Thank You. What's that? Absolutely. Um, do you wanna stand or sit or doesn't matter Whenever you're comfortable. Okay. Are you, We like engaging conversations. So a combination of both. Would that work for you? Sure. Yeah. That was must be the last time. You You're Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Oh, I'm just kidding. I know. I can't see any, just the course of habit. It's Cold's. The course of habit Car. It's not from where you from new I sent that. Yeah. New York City zone eight.

117You know, it's, it's like Missouri. It's, it is there Buffalo. It gets this cold, crazy buffalo up, but it's not as close as possible. All welcome. Thanks for coming, John. Thanks for joining us again. Um, introduce your team about a half an hour for a presentation and the questions that we would've. Okay. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Well, I'll read, um, for our presentation in order of the questions. So I think you have time to review 'em and, uh, please interrupt us, right? And then we can answer any questions you have. Uh, we'll not, won't break out too long or too many questions, but again, John, Jenna, James, if I call 'em jr, same guy. Uh, again, thank you for having us. Um, here's our agenda. Obviously we'll go through the referendum. Support,

118communications, budget management and financials and risk management. Yes. So there was just a couple questions on communication. I know we spent a lot of our time last time on the engagement and communication side of it. Um, but since the last time we met, um, we were three for three for the school districts that we worked with in November on bond referendums. Mm-hmm. Um, these are all technically Minnesota. We really have Wisconsin and Minnesota, um, at different times of the year. Um, these just happen to be the, um, the ones we had this November. But when you think about, um, that guarantee of receiving support throughout the entire process, knowing that, I mean, we hope for that Yes. At the polls, but we don't really know. Um, I I really believe that. Um, we just have

119really strong relationships with the school districts that we do get to partner with and have met with all these superintendents again, since the bond has passed and they've just been overflowing with, um, the accolades of just how, how it all went and what they're hearing from their communities. And so I just, um, if, if you'd like to reach out, these are a few references that just are hot off the presses with working us for, for the last like six months on referendum communications. Can I ask a question about them? Because, well, I'm assuming Woods is a smaller school, but could you like tell us demographically? 'cause I'm like, like a, the $65 million, like, I'm like, are they suburban wealthy districts? Like what is their Yeah, sure. Go ahead. Um, so St. Michael Albertville is

120a little bit more, um, I mean, what would you say Third wor, third ring suburb of Minneapolis and so Hour outside of Minneapolis hour to the west hour 20. Yeah. Um, if you think about the voter base that we were going off of, there was about seven, 8,000 people that showed up to the polls. Okay. Um, bell Plaine much smaller. I think it's like 1200 students, district wide, Southern Minnesota And a half. Um, and that was really the one that, um, we did the feasibility study from start to finish with them. And um, they were consolidating from four buildings down to two. And so, um, when we came across your guys' opportunity and we were working through this one as we went, this was really the one that came to mind. And, uh, Ryan Logger's

121been great to work with. Um, but it was way too much square footage, um, that they had as well as some two buildings that were aging quite a bit. And having, with the facility condition assessment, a lot of the money in those two buildings. And the funny part, and I didn't even know that this is something we do, but they swapped their high school middle school to the, to their newest early will. I guess that was the plan to swap their, um, elementary school into their high school middle and then their high school middle into their elementary. 'cause that elementary was the newest built and had more land opportunity around it to, um, to grow. And That other handout that you resent over, that's this, that's, that's the story. Right. And then lake of the

122Woods way up, If you got the other side of lake, what would you Canada? Yeah. Way up in northern Minnesota. Um, they had come off of a failed referendum within the year and we hadn't worked with them that first time around and really came in. They actually had a combined one question of operating and bond. I just put the bond funding on here. Um, but something unique that you don't always see, um, a new superintendent that had came in. So just a lot of, um, new pieces there, but it's a one building, um, district and so just a lot of, um, maintenance and upgrades and safety and security at that one building. And then if you remember a proposal from last time, so a year ago in a year and a half ago, Bayfield, we

123passed last year. If you remember, I'm assuming you know what Bayfield is? Uh, Richmond Schools. Schools cumberland's under this construction right now. Uh, finished Salem, thank you. West Salem. Uh, river Falls, we just finished. So we're going into cycle work mostly in Wisconsin, Minnesota, but these were our three this year. So. And then I just, um, wanted to show you on this. And I know that the one question was really what we just kind of covered, but I just wanted to make it clear, like the comprehensive nature that we really look at our referendum campaign, the communication, this is just a, a piece of it, right. But I wanted to just touch on, um, just all the different deliverables that really make up a strategy around a, um, community. And again, this is active campaign

124mode, but everything from a series of videos. I think we, um, had testimonials from over 30 people within the community. 'cause this was a larger community and we wanted to make sure that we really hit a lot of representative groups of the community. And they're, they were coming off of two failed operating levies within the last three years before we joined their team there. And so, um, just making sure that we were having a really large group of representative, group of the community really involved in at the ground level of this campaign. Um, everything from the sample ballot, so you can really see question one, question two and how that's gonna be laid out as well as some call ups on the why behind some of that. 'cause sometimes, you know, ballot language can just

125feel like jargon. And we wanted to make sure when they showed up to the ballot box that they really understood what they were voting on. Um, site maps at every building. Um, there was a little bit of everything, um, or, you know, everybody had a little piece of this just to, um, make sure that we had a large group of supporters around the bond side of, um, this project as well as just, I mean, support with community meetings. Um, their tax, uh, the long term tax stability was a really big piece with the operating side and just trying to make that as visual as possible for people to really understand what the next 10 years were for them in the community. Any questions for Jen on communication? And we can circle back around. I think

126I had some time if there's any questions on this at the end too. Okay. Uh, project bidding, I'll handle this. Um, so we're, we're construction managers. We elect not to self perform if we need to, uh, in the private industry and other sectors. We live in the K 12 sector, but with public money, that's our philosophy. So every single trade you can think of, we publicly bid out and collect those bids ideally. So again, right, we get all the grinds, um, maybe there's an advertisement for bids out. Ideally we keep work local as possible. Um, we just don't bid things out in just sale low number winds, right? Because my, my dad was, uh, in the millwork business, it was called heating lumber in Baldwin, Wisconsin from where I'm from. And he did it for

12737 years. And he always told me, he goes, John a low bid always forgot something. And it's kind of his joke because he did cabinets. So no one wants to lose money and everybody wants to do a good job and no one likes change orders. So we put them just like you're doing to us, right? You're putting us through a litany test. We do that with our bidding contractors. Who's your foreman? What's your experience? What's your bid? Yeah, that's important too. Um, we what's your bonding? What's your insurance? Da da. And then we sit down with you and say, here's the four or five electrical bids, carpentry bids, carpet, everything you see in this room. There's likely 25 to 30 what we'll call trade contractors or subcontractors. And then you'll get to see who we're

128contracting with. 'cause you might say, what about this person? Or you'll say, you might not wanna work with this person. Likely not, but you never know that maybe you have an experience with them in your building. So, uh, so very transparent. Um, so all the trades are in our, in our work scope. Um, things that aren't like furniture and equipment, um, special testing and things like that would be, we'll help manage it, but you'll pay for those direct and we'll help manage that public. Um, there are scenarios like any of the casework in this furniture or in this media center. Um, you might as well buy direct, no sense I, us buying it. Buying it. When you can buy a manufactured thing like that, you might as well save the money and not mark it

129up. Um, so there's certain things like that we work with you on and what you want to purchase direct. Um, and obviously hazardous materials gonna be separate to uh, get everything there. I did. Um, so no, we don't, we replace a general contractor. Uh, we don't, um, some um, comp of our competition does do that. We have bid it out single prime or triple prime where they'll fit it to a general contractor, mechanical, electrical, and then that general contractor has all the trades, but then you don't know who the trades are, right? We want, we want you to know who the carpenter is. We want you to know who the person's providing the doors or the low voltage or whatever it is. So now we act like the general contractor, but we are a construction

130manager, um, in that phase. Um, and again, a hundred percent transparency. Um, our fees range at 1.65 to 2% smaller the job a little bit higher to feed bigger the job, smaller to feed. Um, it's how that works. And it's on construction costs. It's not on the architect fees, it's not on anything that's not in our contract, right? Furniture, we're not getting a fee on any of that. And then things like supervision, um, I always say like our on onsite superintendent, you know, the person that we're building an addition or doing a big heavy remodel, they're becoming an extension of your staff, right? You're, you're renting his time at that project is, let's just say it's one year one 2080 hours. You're renting him for 2080 hours. You see that late in there at their

131hourly rate. And then uh, they work with their staff to basically manage construction. Can I ask a question real quick? What like, I know you mentioned architecture fees, like typically like do you have a range for what you typically see architects coming in at? Yep, That's fine. You just asked me that in the hallway. Not about this job, but um, I can, you know, and he was actually talking about certain firms, uh, and firms are a little bit different and I could, you could probably name a firm and I could guess whether he's a good be, Ah, I don't know any firms. They didn't know any Firms Somerville. Um, you could do load probably in that six and a half percent I bet. Um, I'd say the fan and it new and remodel can vary.

132And the reason remodel can cost more is a lot of times they have to go into your building and verify. 'cause you usually don't have existing drawings on CAD or anything. So they spend more time up front. So the remodels can be a little bit higher than that and be in that se seven, seven and a half to eight and a half. Um, if there's architects now or some 'em are kind of hung or a new or maybe in that six, six and a half, 6.25 up to that seven. So, um, kind of depends where they're at too. Which for, so can I tell a joke? Any architects on, by the way, I started in architecture so I should be able to say that. I always just say, um, find a perfect architect with no

133change orders and bam double. That was my big dad jokes joke. Me too. I'm doing very good at my jokes today with, um, are you able to buy things direct? Um, of course. Um, but in certain things, um, there's a risk of buying direct. I think I talked about that last time. And if you're gonna try to buy a larger, let's say say HVAC direct, you know, it comes with warranty, it comes with scheduling, it comes with unloading. So we're still managing the install of that. Um, so you, you want us to take it because if you think about it, let's say our, let's retain our fees at 1.75%. That's like, that's a drop in a bucket to the, I don't know, I don't know big referend be 15 million, 20 million. I have no

134idea. Um, it's a drop in the bucket. The money you're gonna save for the risk you're gonna take on buying it direct with the warranty and is it gonna get here on time and things like that. So it's pretty, but there are certain scenarios where it just makes sense, right? And we'd be willing to listen to those items. So, and then have further discussion. Um, I think I hit most of these. I talked about the risk. Okay, I think I hit most of those unless there's more questions on that. Um, managing change orders on county jail, but um, it, you know, we, we thrive on not having change orders because they're reality. We get it, especially under remodels. We open up walls and things that air change orders at the end of the day, they

135cost us money, it's paperwork for us. And then we're, I'll just say it, we're babysitting the process because contractors will send in a change order for something we like that doesn't cost that much, you know, and then we get in that little contest of well yes it does, no it doesn't try to get to be an active change order. And once our team approves the change order and it goes through the architect with their approval, then it goes through the owner for their approval. Um, you could call, uh, if you know Lynette Edwards at all, and we recall, she's the business manager. We, you know, we're done with that job now and all the contingency lean back to them and they had like five, six different sites. So on all six sites we had $900,000

136go back on $40 million of work. So it's, it's that transparency when we're done, we're like, oh, there's a contingency file, here you go. So you're seeing how it's spent. And her email was great. She goes, oh, I didn't know it was that high. She goes, I'm going through our priority list, what we didn't do and now what we're going to do. So that was an email today. I'll add a little bit that we actually, so Our pre-construction estimating team goes through the documents, obviously pre-construction, but on one case, and it was a hospital actually in up here recently where we did that part, the issue with the documents, we had over 20 pages of questions to the architect because the design was so, we'll call it undone. There wasn't all, all the details weren't

137in there enough. And so there was big questions and the competitor at the time that also there was a, a dual purpose, one did estimate we did, they came back with two pages. And that typically is a, a sign that they know if they go into this and they haven't asked those questions, there's gonna be those change orders. And that is a big risk to you as, as the board members, but also to the community at large if that type of engagement happen. So we really do try to do that homework right up front so that there's clear, I mean there will be issues. You open a wall, there's gonna be something that nobody could see, but the reality is you want to do whatever you can to limit risk so that the taxpayers aren't,

138you're not going back to the taxpayer saying, Hey, we didn't, now we have change or that we have to not figure out how to pay for. So you just do have to be worried about the risk side of that. So just one horror story we'll say, And we're telling you we were rolling our eyes after we were in the hallway talking shop and we were rip on architects. Um, and I like him, don't get around. Um, like we were looking in the hallway here and then, you know, there was a case where the wall was supposed to go all the way to the deck in the existing wall and it came out and no one lifted the ceiling tile to see the wall went to the deck and the architect said, well why didn't the

139bidding contractor look at that? And I go, I don't know, you had a year to design it, why didn't you lift the ceiling tile foot? So it's a lot of it getting the team in the building and looking behind the, but you know, you wanna tear down the walls out, but a lot of it's spending time on site knowing the buildings change orders did tell that story didn't you? Did. So what happens, what happens when they didn't lift the ceiling tile? Who's it ball on us? Yeah. Um, kind of depends if there's, uh, errors in emission. Like if you paid for something you didn't need to and a contract, there's a clear scope saying, okay, that's errors in emission. They screwed up their drawings, they have insurance to pay for that. Mm-hmm. Um, if there's

140a scenario where you didn't pay for it and you didn't pay for it the first time, you would argue it's value added and you paid for it. Yeah. So there's, there's kind of a fine line there, there's a machine. So feel like you avoiding one likes a hat's complicated, you'd like to be a team still that three about, um, how much markup did I do to slide? Did I flip through this? Um, oh, the contingencies. Um, typically there's a, we recommend two contingencies. One is for ideally in a perfect world, this is our plan. We're gonna put budgets on your referendum and we're gonna budget what I'll call a medium number, right? It's not a bid 'cause we're, when we put your referendum together, there's no drawings, right? We've got a napkin steps, not much

141better than that. And ideally it comes in under budget on bid day and we say, okay, you're gonna have an owner contingency for, you know, maybe we should remodel that room over there since we have extra money, that scope add that would be in that chamber. Then we would hold a contingency too for those unforeseen things that you just dunno. But that's an example in River Falls I talked about where pretty good in that 900,000 fact. So it's still a transparent type item. At the end of the day, all we want to make is the fee that we told you we want to make, whether it's one point a half or 2%. Um, and we've kind of been talking, managing on change orders, uh, making sure they're overcharged and not overcharged it. I'm gonna drive

142up, um, Brad, we have a Rochester office too, and we're working on Waha Kellogg, which is right on the river there. And we're going through, there's some change orders and one of the contractors sent a lump sum number for $30,000 and he kicked it back and it's a real story today. And my, our project manager kicked it back and said that I need labor material and what's in your chain order. And the con the project manager from this firm had to say, well, if I just break it apart more. You're just gonna nickel and dime me. And he goes, you just told me that you put extra money in these union. Right? I mean, you just almost admitted it right there. So that's, that's our job to be in that process. You know, we want

143look good man. 'cause we want to get hired back. So, um, oh, this is just an example lot. These are things you get see, you know, so agree to see 'em. They're just examples. So we, we know what's going on, where they're at in the process, who's reviewing 'em, are they being rejected, what they're at. So that's just an example of a lot. And financials, uh, payments pretty simple. Um, retail subcontractors, they have to have their buildings into us by the 25th of the month. We try to kick 'em around as fast as we can and get 'em to you by first or second to the next month. Um, and typically they go to the architect too. And then yours is to pay them in 20 day, 20 to 30 days. But I would say

14420 minutes later for days to pay how those work. We gotta make sure we have everything in order. Paps in order, everything's properly signed. We don't approve by the way of Paps if they don't have the bonds in the drawers, their insurance in the drawer, um, all the other paperwork that they need. If they can't bill for material that's not on site, if they're gonna bill for material, it better be in a stored warehouse of pictures. Um, so there's a lot of things behind the scenes to make sure when you get a bill, um, they're on Site. Interrupt you real quick. So, and maybe I've missed this already, but, so the contracts with all the subcontracts, the school holds the paper with the subcontract? Is that what You're telling us? Uh, no. We, we hold

145those contracts. So then we Pay You and you pay the subs. Yep. Okay. So then, um, good question because in Minnesota, just because the Minnesota procurement laws mm-hmm. It's that way, way where we're seeing 'em as an agent. And you would hold the subcontracts in Wisconsin, actually all, most other states, North Dakota, we hold the contracts and we're seeing 'em as constructor. All the, all the service is the same. I can tell you. And it's my only one in Wisconsin. And that was their election when we did the Big Hudson School. He'd been there, they did a huge remodel to the high school, that superintendent of schools and that he wanted to do C agency. That's the only one in Wisconsin. I've been agency other words, all Minnesota's agency. Mm-hmm. So no, they're helping with

146us. But you still know if we're holding a $400,000 contract for an electrical contract or you're gonna know 'cause of, Um, this just a sample schedule. And um, this is the tip of the iceberg on what the, these schedules actually just push out other forms that like if you're missing dates, it flags you. Nowadays there's some technology is awesome, right? Kind of. Um, and then we have the superintendent of a three week look ahead schedule. So they can go into foreman's meeting and then say, okay Mr. Electrician, you need to be in area A and be done by Friday. So we have the shorter schedule and then we have phasing drawings that like to use for administration. Like, oh hey, we're gonna be working in this area. Um, something easier to read, something you can

147give to parents, something Janet can use and make it look pretty and put it on your website or whatever else you want. Um, what types of insurance? Um, so I mean obviously we got all the normal insurance, right? And liability insurance and things like that. Uh, the builder's risk, um, we recommend you use, we can get a quote for builder's risk. Um, that's where like tornado flash, flood and stuff like that. Your insurance provider is typically gonna be less. So we could provide a quote and you could get a quote from your local and we'd like to look at it by the way, because his insurance, insurance company's never like to open their checkbook. And I've got some examples for you. So we like to help with the language. So if something weird happens, for

148example, if we were doing an addition out this wall and this big storm came in and water got into where I'm standing, built his risk and oh, this is an existing property, it's not covered and the property insurance is gonna go well, let's build this risk because of your addition. So now both insurance companies and saying, well, I'm not, but if the insurance policy's written right, then you're covered. So, um, and then again, we're gonna, we're gonna be bonded, right? We're gonna have bond, we use A-S-D-I-A sub default insurance. Um, it's kind of like a conglomerate of bonding of the subs to save money. And then if, and it happens, it just happened to steal contract outta Schwar Lake and went outta business out, out blue everybody. And if we're holding this SDI we call

149it, it's an easier trigger for us 'cause it's a conglomerate where we've got the bonds covered or others, you gotta deal with their bonding company. Guess what? They're not always eager to either. So we've been recommending this SDI, but if we're fortunate enough to get to that point, we're gonna have more discussion about the pros and cons of regular building and performance fund versus SDI. Um, oh, things went wrong. Oh, I, well, I just talked about this guy, the steel guy, you know, park Heights. Um, luckily our project managers, um, noticed it right away. Um, one load of steel showed up the next was supposed to come the next week and they were like, there's no steel, no one sensoring phones and, and there's a problem, right? And so we were super proactive. We got

150on the phone, we did get the bonding agent to come down before we even had that meeting with the bonding agent. Um, Esteban awesome project manager. He got three bids for steel sitting there on the table. So the bonding guy came in and said, Hey, I'm gonna save you step. Yep. And he goes, okay, I'll start calling him. So are we, are we gonna lose some weeks? Yes, but you know, we're early enough in the project. We're gonna, we're gonna make that time up. So that's fresh off the press. That's literally a two week old conversation. We're on skip on budget too. We have questions. They do go too quick. I know Jen, I don't know if you No, that was great. I mean I think we covered a lot of my role last time.

151So it was a lot of construction follow up, so we knew it was gonna be heavy on John's side of it. And then I know we sent this a week or so ago. I don't know if there's any questions on that necessarily, but, um, it's honestly a, a process we do with most of our clients, the feasibility study, FCA engagement task force. Like that's what creates a successful referendum at the end of the day and a community that really feels like they're bought into a vision. So, um, yeah, if there's any other questions, How do you feel about the timeline for a November referendum with this district, with the potential of leaving the school onto this site? I typically tell clients one year is a good timeline, much shorter, just pushing it a little bit.

152Um, when I did summer set back in the day when Randy Rosberg was still there, he gave us like six months and I'm like, really? We did it in the past. Um, but your year is, yeah, You'd be moving. Yeah. Um, I mean we just got hired last night, um, and they're doing a November referendum as well. Um, but they're through a lot of the task force and kind of got their option figured out. Actually you've got a, some of your study done already, right? It would be kind of reviewing, validating. So that's gonna help us get through that quicker. And part of it too is are we gonna have some community engagement and do three, four meetings and just feed them the information that you already know or is it gonna be 12 meetings,

15312 options That can grade things up a little bit. We might not know that answer right now, but usually I tell people I think our current about office is my opinion based on all of my lack of building experience. But I think that our facilities assessment is pretty solid, but it does not include at all a feasibility study of a school move, which is a very different thing Side of it and, And the costs. And I don't, that's that'll be us getting into the operations with you a little bit and what those savings can be similar to Bell Plaine, that kind talking about, um, and then doing a, uh, which is student teacher ratio, which capacity of the building, how many students can get gear, how many students are left, and then helping get addition.

154So that come together fairly quick. I think knowing the size district A related communications question, um, or something that we've been like, I think we've just been a rumbling is the question of uh, like in communications dealing with, um, like the next use of buildings. Like if you do consolidate, I think that we're a very fiscally conservative, uh, district, but, and I think that that's a value that probably people will continue to have. And so the idea of an abandoned building is something, and so I just was wondering if there's like, if you have experience in wrapping in that conversation, even though that's obviously not like the referendum is not that, but, But it can take down a referendum. Yes. And I've seen it. What I take down a referendum. Yeah. Um, yeah, I think

155the more, and in a small community I would hope, I mean I think the task force representation of some city people, um, would be great. And I think ongoing conversations of not necessarily the exact what's gonna happen to that building, but a frequently asked question with a pretty solid answer. Um, I mean there's usually funds connected if it makes sense for the community to just demolish it rather than having, um, a building sit there. But there's been other times where it's like, no, I mean that won't go over well and our community either, but, um, mean you gotta make sure you have an answer of some sort and even if it's, we're having active conversations with city administrator on this and have several different opportunities, if someone's not gonna come up and you know, buy

156it for a dollar or whatever it is, there's definitely an answer that needs to be worked in. And that's usually some behind the scenes work with city and county to make sure that you guys all feel good about what that answer is. And Bell Plain, this is a conversation this week too. We had 900,000, we had two buildings to demolition and we had 900,000 in the budget and the superintendent called and said, Hey, I think someone wants to buy an old district service center. Is that gonna save money? I'm like, well, yeah, they don't have to demo it. Mm-hmm. So, so we usually recommend putting money in the budget to do something with that facility. So it's just not an eyesore for somebody. So we're gonna, unless you've got a buyer or someone's gonna do

157something with it, um, we recommend putting money in do something. I will say you guys don't have the review and comment process either that Minnesota districts have, thank Goodness. So that does buy you several months that we kind of have to be ahead of it on our Minnesota districts. Um, just with the minne, the Department of Education approving some things that isn't quite the same here in Wisconsin. So that buys you some extra time, which is good. Mm-hmm. Who takes care of qa, QC on the engineers and architects plan sets the quality control? Great question. Um, so we have a, if you remember from last time, um, our pre-con department quality control department, we have in-house mechanical, electrical, structural, and architect not to do design, right? We're not competing with architectural engineer, but their peers

158to for review and to go through and what kind of system are you putting in here? And, and it's more times not just that, it's sometimes it's a life site costing of it and they'll say, well why are you doing this system because the payback on it's 50 years or 75 years. What if we do this traditional system? Not always. Sometimes it works out to have, I'm not saying you're gonna do any geothermal, but that's the extreme. But, um, so a lot of that type of lifecycle costing and review and, and we wanna be part of the team meetings when they're going through design. So we're, we're sitting in on those meetings and they, what I call the round bottom, we go architectural, uh, and the interior finishes, mechanical, electrical. So, and we're out at

159the table. So during construction you use a critical path timeline, I assume, who's responsible for overseeing each subcontractor to make sure they stay on task? So we'll have an onsite superintendent that, uh, we've got dozens and dozens of 'em, uh, that we would introduce to you. Um, probably be col, toman, that's my hometown. Baldwin, Wisconsin. He's one superstars in Richmond right now. But he would be on your site where Jeff would be and they're the day-to-day operations monitoring that schedule, doing that three weeks. Look at his schedule that I'm talking about. Mm-hmm. That's so they'd be your full time for schedule. We certainly, when you get to that point and sometimes it's worthwhile bringing a superintendent meet your children and say, oh, what that guy, because he's here all the time, the teachers know by

160name. Okay. Thanks again for opportunity. Thank so much for coming. You, Us. Appreciate It. Thank you. Make the hard decision tonight or Yes, Shut this off. Definitely joke. We can't make Making a decision. Thank You. Thank you guys. Have a good night. Have a safe trip. Thank you. Just dust in case. So now we move into discussion lot I have a question for the experts at the table. Maybe start with is self-performing or not self-performing better? Like I'm like trying to, I know they probably both have their pros and cons and I'm just like, they seem to say like they're better than the other one. And I'm like, I don't know. I'm just like, I don't know enough to know. Is that a, is there a real difference or is everyone has checks and balances

161built in? It depends. Okay. That's not a good answer, but it really truly depends. Sure. Um, there's great benefit to having everyone within one comprehensive team. Mm-hmm. Like performer services is, there are benefits to having two separate entities for over a check and double check. Mm-hmm. And there's advantages to having somebody totally separate. They have no, um, hidden agenda or no secret. But the firm, the problem is if we, we have to go through with Carl Anderson, we'll have to go through and have interview process with architects and engineers now. Yeah. We We're looking at, Because they're the three lane three Very different. We're looking at three very different builds as to Hop around. Yeah, I know. They're very different. I would say if there were three models, we found em different ways to look

162at how to do business. Yeah. So I'm sitting here trying to compare Yeah. You know, prices, right. Percentages, things like that. It's, it's apple and oranges and you have, we have to figure out what we prefer. It's not, it's not going to be the same. They're not pitching us the same. Correct. So would you say it's fair that like the one stop shop is going to be easier on our staff and our resources potentially that we don't have to do as much? Like checking and interviewing different things that we just have to deal with One There, there's something that seems romantic about a company coming in and doing it all for you, right? Yeah. It's like, yeah, we got just sit back, toes up, we got it. Right. That seems great, but obviously there's a

163cost of that and I have to rationalize that too yet of what does, what does performance services, I look into that. I haven't gotten to that one yet. They're just for me for some reason. There's a hiccup happening where I'm like, okay, but you have to make your money somewhere. They are 3% of everything. Right. That's, They charge more for support. That's what they're 3%. 3% Yeah. Of everything. And, and they're guaranteeing no change orders, which that's huge on a project. This magnitude could be they have what was thousand, a million bucks? What was their Referendum help cost? Have Like 10 to 10, Send it 12 for them. And I think, um, I wrote down these ones. I have these ones. The Cross Anderson was 9,000 for the, for the referendum support and Myron Bray

164was 4,500. None of them include the survey. Right. Which I think all, which is like, so that the parts equal. So The, the survey has already been done in 2000. When was it 2001 or 21? Well, the survey, like the pre referendum, It's basically Oh that's, that's, Oh, none of 'em include the survey. Okay. I was saying unfortunately I like, yeah, The, Well, I'll tell you my opinion. Having no other background, I feel like Kraus Anderson was the O only one. Well I mean of the three felt the weakest in like what I felt like I was, knew what I was getting. Like I felt like the other two made it clear. I mean I still don't totally understand the money, but I feel like they made it clear where those lines are, who they

165work with, how they work. And the last one, maybe it's because it was last, but I feel like I still was like, you're kind of going, it felt like a good faith presentation a little bit. Like we're gonna make it work out. And not that they didn't answer the questions, but I, but I did. That was the, the It's it's very true because with said we ourselves have much more boxes to many more boxes to check. Correct. Yeah. There's a lot more things that fall in our lap or we in the AE architecture engineer hiring Yeah. We have to put into their lab. Yeah. Right? Mm-hmm. So I guess I did ask that question, but does that mean that we would be the, uh, have the contract with the ae? Yeah. We would have two

166contracts. Right. Right. So that's why I didn't understand And we'd be hiring the architects ourselves basically have to go through the process. So now that's where the fights Big risk there is that we hire firm that butts heads with them as a PM And change orders You could automatically be getting Yep. Upcharge costs because if it's designed and approved and it's plan modification, that's gotta go back to a separate ae. Mm-hmm. They are no. To get it out quickly because their contract has been fulfilled mm-hmm. Pending whatever riders we put on that you have to within 15 days to respond, that's gonna cost us for that additional service and stuff. So I, We have to be very careful with putting, if, if Carl Anderson is selected, we have to be very careful how we contract

167with the AE because there's additional services that could jack that price up quickly. And a lot of finger pointing. Correct. I also feel like they did not, not that they had to, but they didn't like soft pitch us a timeline, which I would've, I I feel like that was kind of like maybe we should have asked for that explicitly. Right. But just be like, you know, what is that? 'cause to me, one of the feelings I came away with, which might not be based on fact was like, okay, so now we're gonna have to have like another person to hire and that process might go longer. It feels like the process with them. No, you're right. I just looking at the one that they just approved and um, they approved it in November of 25,

168the referendum. And they are gonna be in the building it looks like in fall of 28, which is the same timeline of what this was with a November 20, 26 approval uhhuh. So if that gives us an idea, two Two year. One thing, one thing that's very attractive to me is, and maybe, maybe correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no money front or pre referendum money in performance services that seems like the balances out with the fees you end up paying. Right, right. Right. I I agree. I agree. But if you don't win, if you don't win, you're not out. It's, it's a, it's a and they, they're familiar with Referend. Oh that's right. They don't charge it Refer, they don't charge anything until if they, if they, if we win then it's Assist

169operational passes, but the facilities doesn't for that. That would be 'cause referendum asked, We would have to see the contractor Clarify it that way, but make sure we verify That we have checkpoint into any contractual. Correct. Is it referendums referendum? They did the performance, they did a feasibility study for us a few years back. Right, right. Yeah. How was it working with them? They were good, I thought. I thought they were good. So they're familiar with the facility building. You got a lot of stuff. I will tell you as someone has done a feasibility study for a school when I was at REI until you were guaranteed the contract level on the next one, It's a very, very Topical look. Mm-hmm. It's a 10,000 Foot. Well if you read the one that they did originally,

170they were like, looks like the elementary school roof is good, but we're gonna have to check after the snow comes off. Mm-hmm. That was like literally written in There. Right. But they, they were here for like, uh, three days. So it wasn't just like, I mean, a true feasibility study is Deep into everything. Yeah. And you have, they have all that information. We can share what we, A lot of cisa they just did the whole different maintenance. Yeah. There's two other thoughts I thought about while they were presenting the first time and I didn't really mention it right away 'cause we kind of just, I, we were overwhelmed. The what we're ultimately looking for, I would assume is passing a referendum to make these improvements. So the communication side of things is very important. It

171is. So regardless of whether we get one passed or not, I shouldn't say regardless, heavily contingent upon is passing this thing. Did I get a humongous, Hey, we're the best marketers in the world with performance services? No. No. I feel so, but is that simply because they didn't bring their marketing person, you know what I mean? Um, So I, I could speak to that a little bit because, um, so they were here in 2020 due to their first study. So then in 2022 we did go back. Um, so I joined in 2021. We had a very short period of time, less than six months, um, because there was a relationship already from 2020 with performance services. Um, I did ask the board would it be, uh, acceptable by the board to bring them back. They

172came onsite with, um, again, two engineers was here for a full day. We had like a 12 hour day. They gave some basic updates to the plan from 2020, um, again coming off of COVID. Um, and we had a short turnaround. Um, they have a two member communication team, um, who I pressed hard to get what we could in a very short period of time. And they prioritized us the best they could. And they were, they were very professional to work with. Um, and I understood like the hard nature of needing those resources to be out into our community. I think I had eight or 10 different sessions and I mean, Jim helped with the yard signs. I drove to scene points to pick 'em up like within 24 hours when the customer service they

173reference is very positive. I, I can attest to that. And they, they stepped up their game. Um, we were probably part of the debrief when unfortunately we didn't pass November of 2022. And we all recognized that timeline was just too short, too condensed. It was very difficult to really meet all those targets. But those were good feedback communications that we had back and forth as well. So, um, just an experience that I had with them. That's great. Kind of, they were helpful sites. I did. I mean, I have to say it in that same vein, I do feel like the, well the other two brought their communications people, which is like the hard thing because the communications people like tend to be like good. I mean I feel like the Myron whatever that person like,

174I was like, oh I trust you. Like you were like, you're good at at marketing. Well, like you're marketing yourself in a way that makes me feel good. Right. That's job. Right. It just, it's It, I mean they gotta, they gotta believe in their, in their game because they're, I mean they're gonna charge us for that 10 to 12. Yeah. Talk to services now on a whim of does it pass now whim. But obviously on their efforts to pass it so, Well I guess they didn't charge us on our refer. Did they charge? So they, so that kind of answers the question they went into operational with us and or not they went to the first round. So they did, we had capital admiration in fall of 2022 and it might mention that we did

175have videos and maybe some board members were part of just um, and we had parents and we had others. So again, example of the work that they did, which was very personable, they looked for photos of our students and our staff, they get to make a connection with our community. So their communication team I found to be very, um, they wanted to understand what the Athens community was looking for and they looked for those connections and they wanted that. Correct. Mm-hmm. It doesn't cost us anything that we lose. So Minds made up losing is the only costs us, I feel like let's not lose. How about that? It's not, how about that? I feel like we know so much more now, right? Like of what didn't work one time. Um, what other discussion you want?

176I could just Say I wanna thank the board for the very comprehensive set of questions. Um, and as I mentioned, you have a few folks have been reading over the plans and this is of course not my area of expertise and I have some questions, but they were answered. But I appreciate the board's expertise of what you brought and I think it was really important that we invited them back for a second time. So from my leadership perspective, thank you. I appreciate that and I continue to learn along the process. So, um, thank you for being very diligent in going through this process. Thanks. Mm-hmm. Um, I also agree with that. I mean like just coming from some of us who have zero experience with contracts and construction and it's very helpful to have that

177expertise. So is there more questions or discussion? I just have one more point. Um, yeah. Your project manager is 50% as important as your AE person. If your plans coming out are crap, there's no project manager in the world that's gonna be able to save it for cost pay that still pay, correct? Mm-hmm Go play. But it still, um, so as far as fees for the ae, that's not as big of a concern for me as others because sometimes you save money by paying more upfront. Okay. A good architect and a good engineer will ultimately save you money on a project if they do the job right and do it well. So IIKI can't get behind em because we have no idea who the AE is gonna be. I love their rate for their success

178rate on Yeah. Referendum. But you can't argue with that. But that's only a small portion of of the package. Right. It truly is half the package. Yeah. I mean I'll give you, Well I mean theoretically you, you could go through referendum for, for $15 million you get an AE and they could take what you wanted and do it for 10. And that gives you room to add Correct. Want items instead of need items. Because ultimately we're gonna start with what do we need. Mm-hmm. And that's what it's gonna be boiled down to. This is what we need. Anything that's left the contingency funds that are left or cost savings through construction, that's when you get into your want list. So you either can add those as once or just not use the money. I have

179a general concern within myself of the, who's responsible for what problem when it comes to putting lipstick on a pig when the same guy is, when the pig's holding the lipstick, it becomes an issue. Right. Because now you're just got a pretty pig. Right. So Right. So no, I can checks and balances wise it's good to have different parties. I see that. At the same time for ease of, of efficiency. Right. I like efficiency, I like, I like the fact that you're gonna have quality subcontractors reviewing this stuff obviously. Right? Yeah. Right, right. That are gonna call 'em out if there is something that Very true. Yeah. I mean we're gonna have a say in like Right. Generally and that's a big, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I do. I do. And just by

180selecting a firm tonight, we are still not contracting. Right. We still have to go through the contracting process with them. Right. So you're exactly right. That's what I'm saying That come out once they send us contract documents. 'cause that's where a lot of stuff gets, comes to bridge. Agreed Around construction of looking at that stuff. Trust me. Okay. Do we want to go around and say our opinions, like do a round robin, like who you would go with now or who you would feel comfortable with before we do a vote? Or does that the way that people wanna do this? I don't Care. I think I'll just make a motion. How about that? I am looking for a motion. I'm gonna make a motion performance services a second. Okay. Just to clarify, is your motion,

181I'm looking for a motion or the motion is to, for the district's to authorize district's administration to take all appropriate and necessary steps to engage performance services to conduct a feasibility study as presented to the board. Yeah. Is That what you're saying? Exactly what I said. Okay. Alright. Just double checking. Okay. There's no finance piece involved at this point, but should we still do a roll call? I feel like we should still do a roll call vote just for transparency. We have discussion first too. Well that was a discuss discussion. So it's not a motion then discussion. Got it. It's a motion and a second. Got it. So now we will take a roll call vote. So when your name gets called in, you'll either, like, if you are in favor, you'll say, aye. If

182you are not, you say nay, and then we'll go from there. Okay. I think we're ready. Steve? Yes. Jessica? Yes. Tom? Yes. Angie? Yes. Tucker? Yes. Ka. Oh God, I'm, can I abstain? I just feel like not, I can't abstain, but I can say no and no, it's gonna pass. Okay. No, it's my like not further discussion. Cam. Yes. All right, so we carry motion. All right. Thank you so much. I was like, oh. Alright. So with that we have selected a vendor and we are looking for a motion for adjournment. I'll make a motion. Okay, I'll second. Thank you. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, nay carries 1122.