BOE interviews project management firms

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The Homewood Board of Education interviewed three potential project management firms Friday. The chosen firm will be tasked with overseeing pre-construction and construction work to determine the best plan for Homewood schools to accommodate student population growth.

Though funding for the expansion project will include $55 million from the city's $110 million bond issue, the board decided on April 10 to hire their own project manager independent of the project manager the city will hire for its parks and public safety projects. The board also hired a demographer to begin research on growth trends and the future of the school system.

Three groups were chosen for the April 28 interviews: Hoar Program Management (HPM), Brasfield & Gorrie and a combined team from Volkert Engineering and Robins & Morton.

In addition to touting their experience with similar projects and staff experience, each firm also took time to demonstrate their employees' or headquarters' Homewood connections. HPM has recently worked with Vestavia Hills, Jasper and Pelham school systems on project management, Volkert has worked with Jefferson County Schools' capital plan and the Pike Road school system and Brasfield & Gorrie previously managed Homewood's construction of the BOE building and Homewood Middle School.

All three firms also outlined their plans for monthly or even weekly progress reports, which would be made available to the general public in some way, and budget monitoring to keep costs within the initial estimates they would make once a final plan for handling growth is determined.

HPM team members said, if chosen, they would like to begin as soon as next week with a kickoff meeting and begin planning tours of the schools and meetings with school officials and staff. They also noted their track record of saving school systems like Jasper significant amounts of money by retaining tight control over the design and construction budgets. The team also has experience in projects with multiple decision makers, like Homewood's board and city council, and felt confident they could guide the project and decisions successfully.

Work could begin on preliminary information gathering while the demographers, Cooperative Strategies, continue their work. Greg Ellis of HPM said information gathering would take two to three months, with a plan, budget and schedule ready in four to five months.

Volkert and Robins & Morton have worked on joint projects before, and Volkert Vice President Leon Barkan said their combined team has enough experience with school system projects to match or beat anyone in the state. “Think of us as one [team], to your benefit,” Barkan said.

The two firms' representatives outlined a five-step plan to lead from being selected as project managers to construction. The first step would be stakeholder interviews, completed before school lets out for summer, with teachers, administrators, maintenance staff and other school personnel. These meetings would lead to construction templates outlining each school's needs, which would be presented to parents and community members in a public forum.

The third step would be assessment of facilities, maintenance and land use, followed by incorporation of the demographics results. All of this data would come together into a capital improvement plan with options for the school board to review. Once an option is chosen, Volkert and Robins & Morton would create the master schedule and master budget to move forward with bidding and construction. Phillip Russell of Volkert said the two firms would work with the city or school system attorney to construct contracts holding their contractors to agreed-upon deadlines.

“We’re not going to lose our schedule during the design phase," Russell said. "Not going to do it.”

Russell said some work could be done while demography was still underway, and projected a complete capital improvement plan in August.

Brasfield & Gorrie's familiarity with the school board was one of their main selling points, including that the project manager for the construction of the BOE building, Tate Davis, would return for this project. The team also had experience with multiple stakeholder projects, like Regions Field and the Westin Hotel, to draw on for this project, as well as a history of budget accuracy.

“If we can stay on the same page Day One – and culturally we fit as a group … we can do great things and expand on the past and do even greater,” Project Director Stephen Franklin said.

Brasfield & Gorrie estimated six to eight weeks of demographics work, followed by a month of planning by an architect. Chief Estimator Brett Landgren said each school would need about three to four months of programming and design work, but those could be done concurrently in about five months total.

Since the school board does not have a definite plan for how it will address expansion, Superintendent Bill Cleveland said they felt there wasn't enough information for the firms to give accurate cost estimates for their services. Instead of that, the board gave the firms a hypothetical scenario with a set number of man-hours, and asked the firms to produce a budget based on that hypothetical so the board could compare their costs "apples to apples."

These costs presented are not reflective of what the actual cost of the program management will be. In the hypothetical scenario given, employees like the senior program manager or pre-construction manager would spend a full 500 hours on the project, with other staff like estimators, accountants and assistant project managers spending fewer hours.

HPM's estimate for the hypothetical project was $290,299, Brasfield & Gorrie's estimate was $270,413 and the estimate from Volkert and Robins & Morton was a clear outlier, totaling $694,800. This included personnel costs of $321,300 and a lump sum of $325,000. Volkert and Robins & Morton were the only group to include a lump sum in their cost estimate, though they did say the hourly rates were "fully loaded" and included a maximum of services, which could be reduced if the scenario were real.

Cleveland said the board members will take the weekend to consider the options presented. They will meet Monday morning at 8 a.m., and he hopes to have a decision to bring to the city council's finance committee that night for approval.

“They all have strengths. I think part of what the process I’m going to go through personally … is I do think there’s a better fit for this community. And this is a community project,” Cleveland said.