001All right, we'll call the meeting to order. Seeing as how we do have a forum present, if y'all would bow your heads with me and we'll open with a word of prayer. Holy Father God, we thank you for today and all that you've richly blessed us with. Father God, we thank you so much for the rain and we know that it's not in our time but yours. But we ask if you see fit that you provide us more, dear God. If you don't, we ask that you help our faith to grow in you, dear God. and uh pray that you uh continue to provide for us throughout life as you see that we have need. Father God, help us today to uh be about the school's business to make wise decisions and remember that our
002kids always come first. Father God, forgive us because we do fall short of your glory with our sin. It's in Christ's sweet name that we pray. All right. There are no public comments. Correct. Okay. So, presentation by friends consulting group and then by performance services. Hey, Jesse. We've got you. Um, I've got you project I've got you projected on our screen. Our our board's here. We just opened up. Um, sorry you have to look at me the whole time, but everybody can see you. It's all right. Um, you just I kind of gave them a a brief, you know, cliff's notes version of what you do, but um, you know, the floor's yours. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for giving me a few minutes to talk with you about that. Um, so we're
003a friends consulting group and we're all u educators or former educators that have been a part of uh different school districts through uh the years and uh we're also kind of tied with friends of Texas public schools and Scott Milderber those guys and what we tried to do is put together a group of individuals that have had school experience and have done a lot of bond issues and construction and work with districts that kind of needs some expertise in various areas to help get things done and work through that. Our the folks that I work with have done bond issues. They've done a number of bond issues from billion dollar bond issues to three or four million bond issues. We also handle all the construction if that's ever in need. I've got a group of
004folks that I work with instruction all retired um educators and retired school folks and we got about $6 billion of construction under our belt. We currently work with uh Aubry ISD, Henriette ISD, Birdville ISD and uh then I buy land for Denton ISD as well. I've got a number of bond issues going now. San Saba I know is one of them. I know they've done prosper as far as large bond issues as well. So, we do a little bit of everything, but the goal was to uh just kind of have a group of individuals that have been in the school business and retired or are about to retire and then help districts as needed for a period of time or whatever need or expertise they may have. So, that's kind of in a nutshell what
005we do. Uh, I personally live in Argal, so I'm up in the DFW area. And what I'd like to do is, uh, I had an opportunity to talk with Jesse a little bit, talk with, uh, about potential bond issue. I've also talked with some of our folks about kind of what we do on the bond issues and some of the different things that we could do to help. Um, and then the final thing is, uh, if there's depending on there's need on helping with the construction projects themselves. I know I shared with Jesse kind of a little bit information about different types of contracts that u that are important to make sure that contract with architect or contractor make sure that you have good contracts in place that are fair to the district and protect
006the district in case uh things don't go right which obviously we the goal is to get a good contractor good architect and you don't have these problems but sometimes I do know that there are people out there that are not necessarily working in your best interest and we kind of work as a district advocate to make sure we get people that are. So that's kind of a nutshell of what we do. I don't want to spend a lot of time talking with that, but I'd really like to uh Jesse if there's questions or any guys have any questions about what we do and kind open it up and and talk with you or answer your questions about different types of things. Yeah. Do y'all have any specific questions? They're a consulting crew. Um, you want
007to you want to talk to them about like fee structure or how how y'all do that? Sure. Okay. And u bond issue. Uh, just calling it up. Um, so I work with one of the folks I contract with that are actually school people are Brew Media and I actually sat down and ded with them about that. What I'm going to do is give me a second. and I had to reboot my computer just a second ago and decided I didn't wanted to. I'm going to share my screen with y'all if that's okay. Yes, sir. Can you see my screen? Yes, sir. Okay. This is one of the people we work with, Amanda Brim. She has just recently uh the been the uh PR person at Louisville ISD. Um and she's done a number of bond
008issues from large schools to small schools, but I work with her a lot and she kind of put this together for Harmony. Um and what we can do is uh this just kind of talks about different things, a grounded local approach. The goal is to not just bring in a uh an idea of what we do in a broad basis. We want to tailor to where the district needs. Look at your voter base. look at uh what we think the issues are out there and help you guys communicate on a number of uh avenues, you know, from whether we do mailouts to social media to uh helping you get your website up and running for bond issue and have all the the facts and figures of everything we need for the bond issue. And the
009goal is to to fit your scale, fit your district and the needs of your district. And so the goal is we obviously want to tell together. So, there's a number of different things that can be included in the package and it's kind of a menu of things that we do. Um, you most recently worked with u a smaller district Henry at ISD that we're starting on construction now. Um, if you want pre-bond communications trying to get ready for it, she does that as for 2500 a month. When you get into the entire bond blitz, that's all inclusive. That's developing the strategy, the design, the print, the the mail. Um we we do voter analysis and uh the entire package to take you all the way through the bond issue runs in the neighborhood 50,000. Uh
010but that includes us paying for mailers, us paying for all of that. That's a one time that's an all-incclusive fee for everything. if you wanted to keep working on them. Some of them want to continue after the bond is passed with that and that fee is 4,000 you want to do all your communications. That can happen. Uh some people do that and some don't. But the allincclusive structure is probably what you're really looking at now and kind of what you're thinking. Uh, and Jesse, I think you got you sent me a little bit of information about some possible roofs or things of that nature that you may need to uh get done as part of this bond issue. Yes, sir. Our gym roof is one issue. Yeah. And probably um I think one of the
011first things we probably need to do is get a all-incclusive uh list of what we're trying to go for and get some pricing on it to figure out your bond. And uh I know y'all work with government capital and looking at bonding capacity or what you're interested in doing. I think that'd be the first thing and then make sure we're on the same page with that and then you started to be working on the process of getting the community involved and that would tie into the bond blitz. Does anybody have any question on kind of that part of it? I I know I'm being brief, but I don't want to I don't want to go through a lot of presentation for you u for that. That's kind of uh kind of what we're trying to
012do. Typical I will not I know this is compared to pricing if you get into groups to do bond issues for you. It's typically more expensive. Um but I know that some architect firms will help you or some contractors may help with working on that. Um, I think the only concern about when you're looking at that is what kind of pricing that they would have or kind of contracts and pricing they have for everything else. I won't stop sharing my screen there. Now, if you're interested in getting into the construction part of it, um, typically, uh, with that, what we do is we This is kind of two different things you can do. We can help you get the through the bond issue, help you get a good contractor on board and architect and take
013it from there or we can help you work through it for the entire project. I don't particularly uh what I my part of it is um I work on bonds kind of make sure we have a good facility plan and study. Then these guys, V True Media, her name's Amanda. She works with us on, you know, getting all the uh pieces to get the bond passed. And then after that, then you would come in if you're in work on maybe get architect on board or before and then a good contractor. So that's kind of the way it plays out. And the other piece of the game is uh that I'm also a CPA as well and as you know I've got about 30 years of school experience done a lot of bond issues and I
014can certainly work with your financial advisor to make sure y'all have a good plan in place for uh payment arbitrage and all those things you got to do as part of a bond issue. One thing we ran into in Henrietta is their bond issue is really tight and they have a lot of needs. And so our goal was to make as much interest during the process when we had the bonds sold versus when we spent them. But you have to work through arbitrage. And so we have to have it all spent within two years. So we we manage that on a monthly basis to make sure we hit all the uh required uh places that you would hit as far as 6 months and 12 months that amount spent to comply with the hours rules
015and so you get to keep all your interest and don't have to pay any back. Those kind of things are part of it too. Um having been um in the school business for as long as I was for 29 years um we know where what you go through and we want to make sure maximize everything for you. At the same time, we want to make sure that uh we have good architecture, good contractors to protect you from uh and get a good product that you're expecting and wanting. Are there any questions or things I can answer or help you with? Um any anything construction management risk, right? Um the procurement method, construction management at risk. Okay. So, let's talk a little bit about that. Excuse me. So, when you start looking at your people, first
016architect, if you have an architect in mind, they're the first one I get on board. You can we can either go find one or we can do an RFQ for architects. The goal is to make sure we get good architects to the table and then at the same time we get a good contract for you that protects you and gives you the fair price to make sure that um you know you're not taking advantage of in various areas and some architects are really genuine with their contracts and some are not. And so that's step one. Step two is contractor and First thing we have to determine is what method of contracting and what to do. So you have a couple things. One, there's always competitive seal proposals. Uh there's advantages and disadvantages with that. The
017advantage is uh typically you get one pricing for everything. The disadvantage is that if you if it goes over your budget, then it's hard to do value engineering without getting dollar for dollar back. You sometimes get less if you're trying to value engineer afterward. So that kind of takes you into what I consider the next level, which would be a construction manager at risk versus construction manager agent or commonly called C versus CMA. So C and just 100% honesty, that's the one I prefer is because we go out and we hire a construction manager and then that construction manager works with us on budgets for our projects and we work out our budget prior to the actual bids taking place. The advantage of the CM in my opinion is that when you sign that contract
018that what you get a guaranteed maximum price that the project will cost you and what and with that guaranteed maximum price is the district will pay no more than that for that pricing. So it turns out our guaranteed maximum price called the GMV is a million dollars and that's the maximum a district can pay unless we increase the scope of the project. But if they go over a million dollars, it's their risk. All the subcontractors on the CM are contracted with the contractor. meaning that if they have any problem with any subcontractors, it's their responsibility to get it fixed. Our only contract is with the general or the construction manager. Now, that's that's probably what mo a lot of the folks are doing that I'm I know of. Now, then you have the CMA contract,
019which is construction manager agent. Typically the firm that does this the most that I'm aware of is Gallagher and they uh they kind of sell that quite a bit. But here's my concern with that. They have no risk or liability in the CMA contract. All the risk and all the liability is on the district. Every subcontract is with the district. And what that means if there's any consent contractor that fails that it's the district's responsibility to deal with the failure whether it's in court or whatever it has to be or going to the bonding agency and that's not fun to do but it puts it all back on the district. The district could even be responsible for writing checks to all subcontractors every month. Sometimes they will do it for you but still there's no
020liability on them at all. And uh I don't know if you shared that attorney's letter that I sent you that really kind of lays out the big difference in the contractors and the two contracts. And that's my always my concern with the CMA contract is it to me it leaves the district wide open for a lot of risk if the contract if the project goes bad or if the subcontractor doesn't perform. And that's my concern. So, if you ask me, my preference is the CM contract because I think it better protects the district. I think it controls your cost and you know exactly what your budget is and you know exactly what your cost pretty much your costs are going to be because you're working through that all the way up to the final design
021before it goes to bid. So if it comes back bid day different from what from very much what you're thinking unless it's less uh that's that's not typical of a good process. That's kind of a long way to answer your question but uh there kind of a lot to it. I hope that kind of explain a little bit of the difference between those two contracting methods. Yes, that's that's good. Thanks. Thank you. I'm writing. He's writing. He's taking notes. Okay. All right. Other questions. I think that's about it. Okay. Well, I know this was kind of short and sweet, but uh um if there's other thing to talk about or you want some more information on how bond issue works or anything like that, just reach out and call me and uh I'll be glad
022to uh present that or give more information for you. Yes, sir. We'll do. All right. Well, I I don't know many boards to meet on Friday afternoon, but uh hey, more power to you. Thank you. All right. Well, y'all take care and have a good meeting. You take ready. All right. My name is Jenna Shadows. I'm with Performance Services. This is Bob Wedi. He is also with performance services. I'm going to hand this out to you. It'll be on the screen, too, but I know everyone likes to take notes and have extra copies. So, we were introduced to your district by your financial adviser, David Falties. We've worked with him in the past. Um, I've worked with him on some res uh some rural bonds, and he asked me to come out here and meet
023with you guys. Met with uh Jesse and Mr. Tate before, so we've kind of gone through this. We'll go through it now. A lot of what we're going to talk about is kind of covering what the previous person just did, but a little bit expanded and then talk about the services that we offer in addition to uh construction which is bond passing. So our next slide is just a I'll get out of your um is just a little bit about us. Whatever. Uh we are in 15 different states. We work predominantly in K12. About 92% of our business is in K12. We do $500 million worth of work a year. That is a lot of money. But if you look at other companies, we're more of a boutique firm. We pick who we want to
024work with and we do a great job. Um, I was going to say so most of our focus is on renovation and addition and that's really where we're a design builder and that's where design build excels because you have shouldertosh shoulder your designer with your contractor and so there isn't any fingerpointing there there isn't any you know sisfall art and and that's what usually happens in construction. So design build is great especially for fixing and renovating because you always run into problems in constructing and so it's moves quickly. It gets solved quickly because there isn't any waiting for the other guy and another firm and trying to get that all put together. You want to go to the next slide? So the previous person had talked about two different procurement methods. There's actually a third
025and we are the design builder. We'll get more into that. construction manager at risk just to put in context is how you guys built your school 16 years ago and then like he had mentioned CM agent is um companies like Gallagher. Yeah. The big difference on that if I could is as I mentioned under the traditional design build which is who we are um we're the design builder so we have architects, engineers, project managers, control specialists all on our team. So there's there's a there's a united front to trying to get that all. So there's one point of contact with construction manager at risk which you did have. You're going to have multiple contracts. You're going to have a contract with your design team and they have a fiduciary responsibility to take care of their
026best interest. Then you have a construction manager and then sometimes you'll have other consultants or um what this gentleman was the previous guy. You might have a consultant that's actually overseeing them. So you'd have this other contract that's now providing input to try and make sure everything gets taken care of. The key thing on that is the the construction manager then has all these trades and then um he was mentioning you have a gross max price for this and that's all nice except that if there's a design error that gross max price doesn't apply. So you end up with So um you still the and then if you I'll do a gross max price now. How much contingency? How much fluff or safety do I have? They all have that in there. So there's there
027isn't any free lunch along there. I'm going to make that a little bit more of a personal example with with construction manager at risk. Some of the issues you guys are having. This is what you did before. You had a designer, you had an engineer, you had an architect, but some of the things that can come up is, hey, they missed flashing on a side of your gym and now you have some uh flooding issues, you have some warped gym floors. Like you have issues there, but whose responsibility was that to catch when you have multiple contracts like that? Exactly. The fingerpointing is Yeah. that it's somebody's, but it's not your responsibility is essentially what these people would tell you. So as an integrated team, regardless if that happened and that wasn't caught by us,
028it's on us to fix it no matter what. So there is nobody that you can blame when you use a design builder. You guys are in schools. Job is here to make sure your education is topnotch. That's not my job. I'm not an educator. I am here to build a building in the right way. So I don't expect you to know how to do my job just like I can't do yours. Although some of you are in construction, so that doesn't apply. The other part is that from a constructibility standpoint, you have when we're going through things, you have your designers, but they're not sitting in their office all alone. They're walking the building with people that are looking at it from a constructibility standpoint. And knowing that we have anytime we we after every
029job we do a postmortem, so we've done over 700 of them, and we find out where where were there errors, where did we get bit? And so actually on just on the mechanical side, we have an eight page check. time we're we're looking at things to make sure that that doesn't happen because we the design builder are ultimately responsible for any issues that that come up. So there is you're like this we got a leak. I don't know who it is. Um one of our first design build projects four years after the project we had a leak and well owner what do we do? Well that's on us. So was it the manufacturer of the product? Was it the installation of the project our product or was it the design? It didn't matter. It's that's
030on us to figure out and take care of and remedy. That's the benefit that you get when you have a soul which is why that works great for renovations. The previous gentleman was was right and construction management as agent. you have all these different contracts which gives you all the opportunity to to to point fingers and and their job as construction managers more make sure it's on schedule and and to try and bully the team into not doing that but it's it's not set up for that win-win so the next one any question you got this is one of my favorite ones because under um design cannot contract construction they're architect have he was talking about hey we're going to have to have this cont for the architect the they have one the construction contract
031but you have this liability gap so there's called errors and emissions and unless the architect has proved or designer proven to be negligent which is very difficult to prove that miss is on the owner to pay for so like I said they can have a gross max price but if there's a design issue or perceived design error that ends up being on you the designers um respons responsibility is to fix the design, not pay for the mistake. That that falls on the owner. So, does that make sense? Any questions, thoughts so far? So, one of my fair ones, if you go back up to that previous slide, so each one of these is a potential paper clip. Then, each one of those is a is a potential gap on those. So, that's what makes that
032one challenging, but you still have that under that model. Go ahead. We can go to the next two ones. All right. One thing about PSI, obviously, a huge thing is going to be price. This is public money. It is getting voted on. One thing as a design builder that it allows us to do is we have a flat price structure. An architect and an engineer charge hourly. So, they have to charge for you a bucket of hours and hope that that keeps their lights on, that that pays their business. For us, we have complete pricing transparency. Every bid we do is going to go out within state legis state procurement laws. We're going to get three bids on everything. We are going to let you see every item, but we also order all the equipment
033ourselves. So, we don't let our subcontractors add extra markup, which takes away from the amount of money that you guys can actually put towards fixing things. Um, in addition to that, like one of our biggest hassles is some of the the subcontractors have their own electricians. Those are the people who don't get a seat at the table. They're not the ones talking and coming in to tell you what's going on. Almost every time you have a delay, it's the people who are not at the meetings that have no clue what's going on. So, we eliminate those problem areas. That was a little creepy. So, we work on that. Saving energy. So, just to take an example, your construction my construction manager will normally have a mechanical contractor and then underneath him, he's going to have
034five or six subcontractors and then he's also buying all the equipment. Some of their subs are buying equipment. So I was a control contractor a long time ago and 60% of my costs were either outside equipment or installation. They were subs to me. And then my installer also had equipment. So that piece of equipment, that variable frequency drive was getting marked up by the installer, by the mechan by the control contractor, by the mechanical, by the general. The architect and CM were putting their markup. So that $1 piece of equipment was costing you 250. When we do it, it's all flat with one markup on PSI that's negotiated. We'll show you what we've done on all 700 of our projects if that's what you want to see. So, it's a it's a standard rate. The
035other thing that I mentioned that as a design builder, um, all we make a little bit of money on everything. If I'm an architect, I need 55 to 60% margin or 100% markup or more on my actual to keep the doors open. That's just but it costs them, you know, to that's that's just their business model. Under us, I make the same amount of money on an hour's worth of time of an architect that's, you know, has 30 years experience as I do on 2x4. So, it's a it's a flat structure. It's it's a lower cost structure because we're reducing all the cost category, all the unnecessary costs on a job, all the markups. And then as you were mentioning, the other big benefit is we have a lot more control of when the equipment's
036getting here. Now, um when I have had problems on a job, it's because we allowed a a contractor to have a sub and they bought the equipment and equipment didn't show up and you're working your tail off to try and get these lockers for the gym that because there was some sub sub. So that's why the other reason we don't like to do that. Uh, just for the record, I keep looking at my watch only because I know you guys have some place to be. So, we're trying to be respectful, not being disrespectful. Uh, the big big big thing here, no change orders. We are never going to come back to you and ask for more money. Something happened. This is not something you see in any other contractor in the state of Texas. That
037is something that we do very unique. Our owner, uh, we all came up through the controls industry. That was something that is a huge thing to him. So, you do not see any change orders through PSI unless you did a scope edition. But that would be well decided ahead of time. Uh next one is speed of delivery. So with design build and there are studies on this. This is not just take our word for it but design build because we are able to do h because we're integrated we can shorten the delivery schedule. Uh one of the examples that we always use is if we were to build something new we know what the rough size of that footprint is. So one of the things that takes the longest is picking out paint colorist figuring
038out the flooring. we can already be ordering the steel and pouring the concrete while you're concurrently having design meetings. So, it allows for a lot of different shortening of the time frame. And for schools, your biggest time to build is in summers. You don't have the luxury of taking time. And on renovation, the the big challenge is you go off for bid and then there's you're trying to get the constructor to understand what you're really trying to do because you got the drawing with with a design builder. Your construction manager, your team is actually talking it and coming up with some of those solutions for you or with you. So, it just speeds up that entire process. And when he mentions teams, we're literally talking that our architect is in a cube next to our
039engineers that are in our cube if the project manager is ever in the office. Um, but they can just talk to each other, call each other. We know exactly what we're doing. So, if something was to come up on a job, if something was a situation that we weren't aware of, uh, we actually can just call each other. It's the number one priority. You don't have to stop work, wait two weeks, add on to your schedule. If I can just give a quick example, one of my favorite because it had we're running duck work up above up ceiling and supposed to go across that wall, but we find out there's a beam right above there. Now, your asbuilt say there isn't a beam there. So, um, normally that'd be a change order to you, but
040I guess our guys should have popped their heads up there and now one of our best practices wherever we're running, we're making sure that the run work. But in any case, it's like, okay, well, we can't go through the beam. What are we going to do? So, project managers online showing the picture to the architect, the engineer like, okay, well, we can either take it out, go out here and go down the hallway, but there's issues because we're trying to fit other things. We want a bulkhead about 5T, run it here and go through there, or we can go this way. And and they sketched it up and they showed it to the owner. The owner said, "Let's let's go this way." It was done. talked to the sheet metal guy who was still there.
041Hadn't left, right? So he's okay. I mean, off he went and it was maybe $100, $200 charge to us to not to the district. If that had been traditional method, that guy's stopping because they can't fix that without an architect making a a change. So now that has to get sent to the architect's office. They have a usually contract, they have a week to respond. Nothing's happening for a week. Then they have a week just to say, "Okay." And then they usually send somebody who's not been on the it's just somebody up. Okay, we're going to have to do I' I've seen that because I was a control. I've seen that take months to get resolved. But that's just the process. So design build is designed to let's let's move. And again, if you're thinking
042renovation, that's that's really where it and unfortunately smaller districts, yeah, you might get your a team of other not us, but other architects coming out here to do the work. by the time they're into the project, they're coming back out with their C squad because their A squad's already back out to try and find more work. So, you see a lot of that because again, they only have hours to sell. I promise we're almost getting there. It's a Friday. This was a Tuesday. I would not be um one of our major things, pricing transparency. So, none of this has to be uh low bid. I know that's a big concern with a lot of people, but low bid is low quality for a lot of different aspects. So what the districts will see and what
043you guys can expose to your citizens if you chose to is the full pricing transparency. Everything will come to you guys and you guys can pick who you want. If you do have vendors that you like using uh plumbers, electricians, we will work with them. So as long as they withhold our design standards, they have to be licensed bonded. Um but we are happy to keep as much money here and locally because it is public money and more jobs to your money. The way we do it is this is spreadsheet contractors. We have we use proc course. So all the bit the RFI request for quotes are going to be there. The quotes are going to be there. The contracts are going to be there and all the buildings because what sometimes happens in other
044is they may get a contract for half a million dollars and then the construction manager will negotiate down to 450. But you aren't seeing that that that difference. Ours is basically cost plus. So whatever that final, you know, that's your number and it's not going to exceed that. But you're going to be able to watch and, you know, be able to trail. Hey, what happened? Well, we were able to find a better way to do something. And that goes into your contingency or owner directed allowance to apply for. And that's one of the ways that uh a typical Semars construction manager at risk is going to be able to save money because they might end up if something goes higher since they're they're stuck to that GMP the gross the maximum price they might have
045to cut cost and do low bid on everything else or start squeezing your subcontractors. That's something that doesn't happen with us. So you'll see the difference between that because the quality of work is going to be a huge component when you don't have to buy a little bit. I'll let you wrap that one up. Okay. So, some basic contractual differences. Design build one contract and one point and one person responsible, one final number. Um, and then you you have an architect that has that's stamping it. So, an architect and engineer aren't going to they're not going to cut corners because their stamps at risk. Nope. You're you're not going to have that. And the other thing is that we're a design le design builder. So we have 28 architects. We have 63 engineers. And so
046a lot of times when you see design build, it's like, yeah, we can do that. And it's a construction manager that then hires an architect underneath them. And he's driving it. And the architect doesn't have much say in it. Ours is a true designer that they're leading this and working conjunct with a construction manager. But it's one point of contract versus separate contracts. And each company has their own fiduciary responsibility to do what's in their best interest, not necessarily what's in your best interest. We mentioned collaboration. You got one team owner's risk. Design builder assumes all the risk. There's a design error. There's any issues that's on us. But we've been doing this for this is going on 26 years. So and and it's schools. We don't find too many. Whoa. Never seen that in
047a school. The first five or 10 years I did, but you know, I mean, we've been doing this a long time. So, um, we know where the the pitfalls are. And so, um, that's one of the reasons that we can assume that risk. That's one of the reasons we can guarantee no change orders is because we've done this and we we know where those big ones are. We eliminate change orders and there's significant efficiencies involved with design build. Um, just like I said, it's streamlined and it is meant for renovation work. I love building new elementaryaries or middle schools out in the field. Those are basically easy. But our our team that we've hired for the most part are your roll up the sleeve type of guys that are going to try and pound 10
048pounds of stuff in a 5 lb bag because most of our squirrel schools are are rural or they're not the Taj Mahal ones. And so our guys are the role to figure out how how can we get the most out of this thing? Where can we get the biggest thousand? Okay. So, that ends up on that ends the procurement component. Do you have any questions when it comes to the actual construction procurement before we jump into Okay. All right. So, one of the things that we do as a design builder is that we do bond support inclusively. Um, we know how hard it is to pass bonds in rural districts and smaller districts. So, we do that and we don't charge you a $50,000 fee or a monthly fee for it because we have to
049get you to pass that bond or we're not going to do the work. So, the risk is on us really if we don't put in the work. If we're not out here with you figuring out what your needs are, how to best talk to all the different people out here, we don't know your community. We're not going to try and pretend we know anything going on here. We're going to take it from you guys and your uh teams that you'll create like uh political action committee, some of your parents, some of your community members in general. Not everybody has kids at the school. It's good to get people who don't have their children in school and they can actually still participate. So, we work and run a lot of the community meetings. We run all
050of the marketing campaigns, social media, print. There's some districts that say no no signs, no no door hangers because, you know, in Texas, you don't want to walk on someone's lawn. We take our direction from you. We can do almost anything that anyone else would do. One of the things that we'll start with is a facility assessment. We don't want to know what your thoughts are yet on uh what you need in your school. We want to look at your campus and tell you exactly from a operational maintenance standpoint what we see are your deficiencies. Then you add in what you guys want on top of it and we layer it in to be able to make sure that you guys can fit for the necessities and the fun stuff. Of course, it's always prioritized
051to what yours are. So we want to ulate that but by coming back with here's what see we see now what do you could you use the buildings here's what we have let's start putting that together in a priority type mix. So lots of things that you heard previously those are things that any good um referendum support team's going to do. One of the things that we do a little bit differently is that we actually have ex superintendents who've passed multiple bonds throughout and they've had to put together great ground game efforts. And so you take the marketing component with the what what they'll call a ground game on something as simple as you have one of those this is not planned but I had this in my pocket from last night. Um this is
052a district we're working on. You'll see it on the next page but they are the pearly arrows. One of the things that we give out is what as the board is talking to people, they have business cards, they have little arrows, they talk to people, hey, vote for Prairie Lee's bond. Um, would you like a pin for, you know, a cardinal pin and they're like, oh yeah, that's kind of so something as small as, you know, that's little, right? But it's a it's a conversation starter that and that came up from our guys with the ground. They were like, who doesn't want they they were the wasp. Who doesn't want a beach wasps? And they're like, yeah, sure, thanks. you know that and and so then they start talking to you about how best do
053we work this what's what's working from a from the ground game and they start working with you on on getting those yes votes out and it could also be tailored material. We know uh the 65 and older crowd really likes getting uh mail. We've done some where you tailor like small newspapers to them because not everybody knows what's going on here if they're not on your social media. But the things that make people happy like getting a mail that's not a bill will work with that. if you have I don't know if you have a BFW but one of my and but the veterans yeah the veteran ones um this guy from a ground you know he's like you have one of those and they're like oh yeah we got a big group of it
054well let's go talk to them and so he went and talked to him with this this other team and and with the team and it turns out big thing with BW that they they had a really crappy flag pole and there wasn't any so they're like well we'll put flags in in the class. We're going to put a new flag at the entrance of the football field which they wanted to renovate. And those guys were on board and all a sudden you had an army of, you know, door knockers, the Vietnam vets and and Korean vets knocking on the door with their saying we want to support this. I'm not saying that's yours, but those are the type of things that they've been through enough of those. They're like, well, have you tried this? What
055happens here? And so they'll they'll customize that portion of it, which is something that we don't see most time. Most time we see that high level Well, we'll get the marking stuff. We'll get the, you know, the door hangers and the mailers, but and that's a good portion of And I personally like when the videos come from you guys, when they're coming from a board member and let's say we're talking about like renovating your gym, we're we're modifying it. But if you have the speeches, videos taken in the gym or you go and talk to students and you get the the grassroots up, it's way better than a professional video company coming out here. It's money that can be spent elsewhere. We like the social media that we know that you guys can touch and
056talk to. Your principles get on, your athletic directors, make sure everybody in your community feels that this is uh applicable to them. I think the next slide we've kind of covered. It really is a collaboration. So obviously the district it would be with PSIs or referendum team. That's our marketing specialists, our educational planners, which we have a lot of former superintendents. Your FA is one of them. Um not ours. He's just a superintendent we work with. And then a community engagement specialist, but all of this is collaboration led by the district. And then this is mostly a joke, but after meeting with Jesse, I thought this one was really funny. So you you can throw it out, but um everyone needs to have a theme. And most of the time it is a superintendent that
057is the front face campaign. That office shows me that tons of people care about his Superman situation. So, it it could be something like this or it could be uh I mean rivalry with IRA is something you leverage too. I mean, let's keep them down, keep going up. It depends on how you want to how to structure it, but your bond will need a a theme, an idea to really kind of put it together. Usually that comes together after we you figure out what your priorities are and what you're going to do. And then this is the example like the pin that I have. This is a district that they are they're going for an $8.5 million bond, no tax increase. And after speaking with your financial advisor, you guys look like you're not going
058for a tax increase. There is massive education that's going to need to be done. Texas law says no matter what, even if it doesn't increase your taxes, it's still going to read this is a property tax increase. People get really freaked out if they don't understand it. They're like, "Oh, the district lied to me." Even on voting day, no matter how much you tell them. So, one of the things that I had here is a very strong education component. And if you can scroll to them, the this was put together to basically show if you don't uh pass this bond, this is your tax rate and what you don't have. Dirty toilets, a gym that doesn't work, and then if you do pass it, these are what you have. So, we work really hard to
059make sure that when you're doing no tax rate increases that that message is out to everybody because it only takes a few Facebook posts to really derail a lot of things. And one of the things that they did is they have these little almost business cards that they're passing out with with the key components of what's in the thing. So, that again it's you're just constantly educating your your community on what are we getting here? And that was a request by the district because the board like they don't always have things on them. You're not going to walk around with a whole backpack of bond support papers, but they were able to say, "Hey, give me a business card." That way you can do it. And everything on our documentation, because it's very simple, has
060a QR link. If you want more information, you go to that landing page. But the majority of people only can handle very bite-sized information. It's quite sad, but I'm sure you know that now. Um, so the older community doesn't QR. So then that but structured differently, right? That is our last page. Questions, comments, thoughts. Good presentation. Thank you. Who are you currently working with or do y'all have any schools? Yeah, we work with a bunch of districts. We are working with Corsa, Prairie Lee, Haiko, all everything from both Paris ISD and we've done work with Austin ISD. So, there's a huge range. You won't catch me personally working in a large district, but we do. And we're helping uh Quana hopefully pass their bond um this time. Um uh there's a couple there's a lot
061that we can't say because they're November bonds and they're not Yeah. So those are the selected and Yeah, that one didn't. Yeah. So there's a number and actually it's it's really your side. That's this is our this is our sweet spot because like I said, our team is really designed for more back it up. If you want a Taj Mahal, you know, those don't go with us. That's that's not us. We're not the the you know, Emerald City. We're not getting you awards. I mean, I got a couple guys that'd love to do those, but more more than anything else, we're we're the guys that are like, "Okay, how do we get them their their program needs and what they have, and this is the amount they have?" And you find people that that's what
062kind of trips their trigger. Okay, how we going how we going to figure this one out? How are we going to get them this space? How are we going to do that? That's really who we hire. And just to hedge one other question in case you're asking, we are based out of Round Rock, but me and half my team, we're out of Fort Worth, Fort Worth DFW. So, I mean, I live on I20. I basically can drive here without turning. So, we're relatively local. And how do y'all get paid? We get paid on construction. And you'll see that as we go through with pricing transparency. If the bond doesn't pass though, you we do not get paid anything. So even if we do all your bond support and we help you with everything, if that
063bond doesn't pass, you owe us nothing. Right? And you don't you're not contractually obligated to us until there's a firm price and a firm scope. Till you say, "Yes, this is what I want and I've seen all your numbers and this is this is the number after the bond passes." After the bond passes. So again when we said the assumption of risk the assumption of risk falls on us but it we don't say risk because the value will be there. Um so unlike the other ones um if you go with an architect you're paying them regardless you pass the bond don't pass the bond. Same thing with construction managers on pre-construction services. It's a different business model. So you basically have a flat fee based on the cost plus. So let's say you're $7 million.
064I got a cost plus on that to get you to the $7 million. And I'll show you that one and I'll show you every one of the schools we've done and it's just a flat fee. And and even that is not set in stone. Everything is negotiable because we'll be willing like if there is a little bit of things that we want to squeeze in more, we're willing to work with that because again it needs to go to education concepts, not just profit. So um So you'll see that all and and then like I said you see all the numbers but like can't stress enough you'll see the quotes but then you'll see the contracts and then you see the billings. So the billings that all the have to match up if you want to
065audit all that and that's all in that's just natural part of the the software we have minutes. You good? Questions, comments, complaints? You complain after we leave. No, we complain in the open. Okay, I like that. Right. I appreciate that transparency. Appreciate y'all being here. Second time to be here. So our next item is to consider and take possible action to select construction delivery procurement methods for the upcoming potential 2025 school bond. So what we need to look at here is either construction management as agent, construction management at risk or design build. How do we want to do that? And I kind of want to I kind of want to go back to their sheet on that. a traditional build. I want to have somebody we can go back to. That's the one thing that
066shot everybody in the foot on this building is we didn't have one person to go back to. They wouldn't come back and then we sued and the lawyers got biggest money. They got problem. So, those are the those are the three right up there that we need to we need to consider those and possibly take action as to which we would prefer to do for a lot. I personally like the design build that way the traditional design. Joe, do you agree? Yes. Casey thoughts. Well, I just been through a house for remodeling and this this right in here. That's what I got called in. And then you can put right in here somewhere. No, I didn't do any. No, no, no. He's the neighbor. I gota go. I I value his friendship more than his
067work. Motion traditional design. I second. Have a motion by John and a second by Blaine for traditional design build. Is there any further discussion? All in favor of this method? Any oppose? Okay. 5 to one. Next item is to consider and take possible action to authorize the issuance of a request for qualifications for design builder for a potential 2025 school bond. And what this does is this allows us to basically ask companies like performance to give us their qualifications. What what makes you better than the other company down the road? Which if we are going to attempt to do this bond by November, this is something that we do need to do. However, if we if we decide that we do not want to uh pursue a bond in November, we can stop the process
068and everything else that we have done then becomes moot. So, I'll make a motion to do it. I'll second. We have a motion by John and a second by Bridget to authorize the issuance of a request for qualifications. Is there any further discussion? All in favor? And any opposed? 5 to one. to we have that from John and from Bridget. Is there any further discussion? All in favor? 6