2020-10-29 PPS School Board School Improvement Bond Committee Meeting

From SunshinePPS Wiki
District Portland Public Schools
Date 2020-10-29
Time 16:30:00
Venue Virtual/Online
Meeting Type committee
Directors Present missing
Load video
YouTube


Documents / Media

Notices/Agendas

Materials

Minutes

Transcripts

Event 1: PPS School Improvement Bond Committee Meeting 10/29/2020

00h 00m 00s
i'm chairing this um this school improvement bond committee and um i guess i'll just read off and if you can after you say your name announce who you'd like to go next so i'll say marcus hi everybody uh marcus klein with borders construction i'm working over at the madison high school modernization project wayne go ahead and go next oh okay yeah uh bling grove reported working with marcus and the team out there madison i'll say dan you're next all right dan young chief operating officer here at pps um roseanne you want to go next roseanne powell board office manager who would you like to go next cara hi cara bradshaw executive assistant to the board and i will have emily cortege go next i am emily courtney's director of purchasing and contracting and i have invited a guest to this meeting one of our advisory committee members uh mark matthews so i'll have him go next i'm sorry i was muted there mark matthews matthews pacific work construction good to see you mark and uh let's see how about you julie um who did you want to go next julie i can't hear is that me i'm going to take that as me thank you thank you julia from edwards uh board member and i um i got on a little bit later so i'm not sure who's introduced themselves already or not so um michelle do you want to call on somebody uh sure how about amy this is sam um board director nice to see some faces from out in the field sorry we're sad that we can't come out and inspect your project in person how about director scott hi andrew scott pps board member glad to be here uh how about aaron storley hi i'm erin storley i am with anderson construction i'm the pre-construction manager on benson and i was a senior project manager on grant thank you for doing that thanks okay hi i'm uh stephanie coyle and i'm on the lincoln high school project uh project manager for hoffman pacific mark uh let's see i'm gonna call marina marina creswell and the senior director for the office of school modernization and i will call on uh claire hi i'm claire hurts deputy superintendent and i'm going to call on nathaniel i'm daniel shu i'm student representative for the board and a senior at jefferson and i'll call on jackson uh hi i'm jackson and i'm one of the dsc reps um or i'm one of the students on the dsc um mary did you want to go next i'm not sure do we have everybody has everyone said their name mary did you want to go next i think she's having audio issues houseless is it is it is it kanan chapman joined i just got on i apologize i'm not familiar with google i was looking for a zoom invite but i am here excellent we're um asking um just for you to introduce yourself your name oh kanan chapman business development
00h 05m 00s
anderson construction thank you yes ma'am do we have anybody that has not gone and do we have any public comment today no okay i think we'll go ahead and get started it looks like um david do you want to introduce yourself hi i'm so sorry i got a call right when it started hi everyone david roy uh senior director of communications for the district thank you director depos thank you okay so um we've done introductions thanks for joining us everyone um we're gonna start out with um we're gonna acknowledge the previous uh meanings minutes um i'm hoping everybody had a chance to review them are there any comments hearing none and seeing seeing none we'll move on to an overview of the business equity program okay well i'll take it from here and i'm going to do my best to present so let me see how this works hopefully well can everyone see my screen okay yes we can thank you okay okay great so uh we've got three main topics today uh the intent of all of them really is to be more conversational we don't have a lot of data to present so feel free to ask questions or interrupt or comment as we go along uh first one is business equity uh as it relates to the bond so what we thought we would do is just do a real quick overview um look at uh just a couple pieces of data uh that might help our conversation uh highlight a couple of current efforts that we're doing as it relates to our business equity goals uh then open it up for feedback and discussion i think that's really the value of this topic is just to have a dialogue and discussion about it so that is our plan um i was going to introduce everyone we already did that so uh emily cortege and marina are going to help walk through uh the few slides that we do have but we've got a number of contractor friends here as well so uh they're here to help answer questions uh if we have any so with that i think we'll go ahead and jump right in uh emily would you mind providing an overview of our business equity policy sure and our our equity and public purchasing and contracting policy was passed by the board in 2012 as we are getting ready for the first school improvement bond in 2012 and it has three components uh business equity which we're going to talk about today let me quickly mention the other two components one of those is workforce equity and that's about increasing our apprenticeship opportunities on our major construction projects as well as seeing an increase in diversity among the workforce on those projects um we have consistently met or exceeded the 20 apprenticeship goal on all of our bond projects all the way through so we're excited about that um career learning equity is about requiring our major contractors in architecture engineering and related services as well as construction to be available to offer career learning opportunities to our students and a lot of our major bomb contractors have done some really creative innovative projects with our students but today we are talking about business equity which is about um where do our construction um and architecture and engineering dollars go um and specifically we want to see uh more of our construction and a e dollars going to businesses owned by people of color by women and by small and small emerging small business businesses so we um you can go to the next slide perhaps then so the goal in our business equity aspirational goal is that we see 18 of our construction and a e dollars going to those oregon certified businesses um and that's whether they are prime contractors or subcontractors or even third tier conferences we have a software system called b2g now um where that pulls our payments on those contracts directly from our erp
00h 10m 00s
system peoplesoft so we know exactly which of our dollars go out the door and then it looks at whether those those firms are certified and it's directly um integrated with the state certification database um it then asks our contractors to come in and confirm payments to any subcontractors and then it includes an audit process where it reaches out to those subcontractors ask them to confirm those payments indicate any second tier subs and so forth and in that way we are able to get really accurate data on um to which businesses our construction and a a dollars really end up with um and so we we put uh b2g in place in 2015 and has been tracking very carefully since then before 2015 dan was in charge of manually tracking um where our bond dollars were going we do also as a part of our uh business equity policy we are required to report to the board annually and um my team does that and we just submitted a report about a month ago to the board for the business equity part you might ask what do we do to try to increase our percentage of dollars going to certified businesses there's certainly an outreach component there is also a requirement in an administrative directive that one when we do a small quote process uh that the project managers must reach out to certified firms for at least one of the three quotes that they seek to achieve and oftentimes our project managers go to certified firms for more than one of the three quotes for the bigger dollar projects that we um solicit by request for proposals uh we always include an equity component and the scoring criteria and so those are some of the ways that we try to achieve our goals and i think we'll talk a little more about that later in this presentation okay thank you emily um if there are any questions we'll just keep voting along we'll certainly have time for questions but if you have any now uh feel free uh we just have a couple of slides with data on it uh we thought maybe this one was worthwhile to to help maybe frame the conversation is uh it's a simple graph that shows our cumulative bond dollars since we passed the bond in 2012 all the way up through 2020. uh and what this shows is you know we started pretty low but we've been on a good trend over the course of the bond we have trended in the right direction and we have turned it up in our cumulative amounts uh this shows our annual percentages over the last four years so obviously we can see we were trending up in the right direction uh for those first three years on this bar graph uh but had a significant drop off last year so i go without saying like that's that's the goal here is to reverse that trend get back to where we were before and continue to increase those certified business amounts i thought we would note just uh a couple data points um one that you know we call a bright spot as our direct appointments so direct appointment contracts are contracts that were not required to compete uh the pbs project managers can go directly to select one firm go directly to that one contractor uh negotiate a price and then execute that contract it's where staff has the most ability to influence who gets the award because they're selecting who they're going to and over cumulative last four years that's the direct deployment contracts have had a 37 business equity uh number so that's a bright spot upside of that coin is our hard bid contracts these are effectively our low bid uh where we're compelled to take the lowest bidder staff has the least ability to influence who wins those contract awards and typically not always but uh we've seen our business equity numbers lower on our hard bids and and can drag our overall numbers down um uh with those type of procurements hey dan this is amy can i ask a clarifying question sure so with regard to the directly negotiated contracts can you um [Music] refresh all of our understanding about which bond funded prog projects are open to direct negotiation and i'm not
00h 15m 00s
talking about the larger cmgc prime contracts but of our smaller ones where do we have the flexibility to do that direct negotiation yeah it's a great question the the direct appointments typically it's a dollar threshold and i should know this offhand but emily can help me out uh for either our division 40 our construction contracts or our professional services contracts if they're below a certain dollar threshold regardless of project uh that's when we can reach out directly to one firm and negotiate with that one firm so i'd say most if not all of our projects don't have some level of direct appointments but again they're they're smaller dollars there there's more of them in quantity we're gonna have a lot more direct appointments on a given project than any other type of procurement uh they're just going to be smaller dollar amounts right the um for uh a e the direct appointment threshold is a hundred thousand so we can direct a point up to a hundred thousand dollars for construction it's tiny it's down at five thousand dollars so so um you'll see direct appointment mostly in um in those a e uh contracts um occasionally if there's ever an emergence emergency work including repair work we can direct appoint that and also the board exempted the middle school work around tubman and um i believe it was rose city park uh when when we were rushing to open those middle schools so those were exempt and those were directed by projects as well i have a couple questions as well um thank you those are great questions um in the rfp um is it possible to share the language around equity like what we're looking for when we're what are we asking contractors to provide or or bidders and then my other question is on the hard bids are we tracking the subs that were contacted and versus the subs that are end up on the job and to make sure that they're the same oh i see what you're saying so i can i can answer the first one about rfp criteria and it varies from one rfp to the next um although our cmgc rfps have been fairly consistent and that the equity criteria is is and and i can certainly get you some example language from prior solicitations but it's usually asking one what is your what is your plan to achieve our uh aspirational equity goal and what can you reasonably achieve and then give us examples of past projects and what what uh utilization percentage did you achieve um so it's it's it's language like uh like that and so do we do we also ask there for the bidder to provide a matrix showing their their leadership structure and and who's in leadership positions um do we are we asking for that too so i i believe we have asked um both for sort of their certification and their um yes their their uh workforce equity within their own um leadership and again we need to look at each um specific solicitation because we've refined this language over time including with input from auditors and from the vac but we have a lot of ways of sort of getting at the issue and then what is the weight that's assigned to that is it worth 25 percent or it that varies from solicitation to solicitation and is often determined by the project manager and bond leadership and so um for a specific project i could not tell you off the top of my head what has been included in the past okay i can say that one of the things that we're currently reviewing is whether there should be a minimum percentage for the equity criteria of the rfps that we simply have across the board within osm when we put out an rfp so we're looking at things like that we're also looking at the makeup of the criteria and really trying to hone in on the types of things that are going to be indicative of a successful percentage of certified business participation um we're definitely taking a much closer look at that um given that the data that we're seeing this year and then i don't know that i heard an answer did um so when uh the lowest response of bitter um do we is anybody checking to see that
00h 20m 00s
the subcontractor that they got bids from are used on the job you know to verify that if they're if they if they win a contract and they're because of the lowest cost responsive do we know that if they go to abc electric for for a for a bid that abc electric is used on the job so our lowest bidders i mean do have to submit uh their first tier contractor form um within a couple hours after bidding and so we have those listed and there are some rules that if they want to switch a subcontractor they have to notify us we have been notified i can think once or twice in the past when that has happened um but i'm not aware of it happening frequently and i i think i think we know from the field that those substitutions have occurred more than has been obvious and evident to us because i think it's fair to assume that that is one of the factors for this um you know this decline that we've seen in the last year yeah so my question was about you know i understand there's a process in place to be notified if the sub is switched out but is there any enforcement in between bidding time and job time and and so i was curious about what what we were doing to en enforce that or encourage uh good behavior so again i've i can only think of one time when i've been notified which they are required to notify us but i can think of only one time when that's come to my attention um so i'm not sure i don't know if marina or dan are more aware of that now i mean we're definitely checking to see if they have enlisted as a first tier sub um then we anticipate that those are going to be the subs that we're seeing come through um in the field as well and so that is a conversation that that will occur if they are swapping out what i'll say though is that the the biggest impact on our um cumulative rates are the cmgc projects because right now our modernizations are primarily cmgc projects certainly a kellogg middle school project is a low bid project that one does have an impact because of the dollar amount for the project but it's not even as big a impact as the cmgcs are so in some ways it's it's relevant it's definitely something that we're looking at but i don't know that it is i don't know that looking at that for low bid is going to really identify the issue that we're facing marina i like i like sort of the way that you're framing that but can you just take it to the next level which is what kind of if not leverage opportunities for encouragement and or explication of our institutional values is there in those cmgc relationships i mean obviously we don't know the subs that they come forward with on their bids are their subs i don't know the extent of the what's being swapped out but how can we communicate we don't have actual leverage we don't have enforcement these these goals are aspirational how can we as an owner make it more clear to the marketplace and and perspective bidders how important these values are to us you know i think those are really great questions that we're we're all sort of grappling with right now and and so i want to clarify first of all that cmgc doesn't um when we bring on a cmgc contractor they're not necessarily coming on with a bunch of subs right that this is there's a process of bringing subs on board it extends throughout the pre-construction phase to some degree or another there's typically trade partners during pre-construction and then there's a buyout of um construction you know packages of work
00h 25m 00s
as part of the construction phase so it's a little bit different discussion um than the low bid projects but i think that the question you're really coming at is not so much the the the details of how they bring on subs or take off subs it's really how do we engage to um to really indoctrinate them in what is important to us right how do we how do we share with them these things that are critically important and i um i feel like we've we do a lot um to that end and i think that's probably a little bit of the the ongoing presentation here you know just a little bit of discussion of the types of things that that we're doing and that we're encouraging our um our general contractors to do um i but i also think that there's there's more we can always look at and so we've got some ideas that we've been thinking through i anticipate we're going to continue having additional discussions both you know with the board and with the with the bac with obama accountability committee as we try to figure out some new things to try to improve i am dan if you don't mind i think we were going to go and just kind of talk through a couple things on the presentation that might give a little more background um and kind of frame it for additional discussion uh yes i think that's actually a very good segue to this this section here um we thought it was worthwhile to just point out some of the efforts um that go into promoting our business equity goals uh emily's gonna talk about the advisory committee here in just a minute um but i think marina if you wanted to highlight a couple things that osm does uh or contractor partners or if you want to have one of the contractor partner friends uh highlight a couple things i think yes and um i think as you said we'll we'll uh we'll talk through the osm and the contractor items first and then um hand it over to emily um for purchasing and contracting but within osm i think as we've mentioned with rfps we have criteria for equity that can help us um try to provide greater importance to to bring on certified businesses we do direct appointments where we can um we also work with the bac and in fact we anticipate working um more extensively with the bac regarding business equity this year both for the upcoming benson gmp but also for potential 2020 bond projects if the measure passes next week we have also requested our performance auditors this year in what's called year three of the performance audit we've requested that they look at business equity and what it is that pps and osm is doing to support business equity we want them to look at what we've done in the past um typically as part of looking at what they we've done in the past they will also look at what other jurisdictions are doing and they'll provide that kind of feedback to us as well as they make their recommendations for what we could do in the future so um we are we very specifically asked them to make it a large part of the work plan for this year and so that is something they've already started um doing their field work on marina where when will we get some information back from the performance auditors on that um their report will be coming out because they it is part of the annual report it will come out in probably june is when we should see the report um as you know the timing council is difficult to present that report to the board um just because we head into the summer and the meetings get a little challenging but we will try to get it to you as quickly as possible and of course you know understand that while we may not necessarily um have their report available to present to you until june in the meantime while they're doing all of their field work they're talking with us too and so this is one of the benefits of the performance audit for us is that they're they're talking through the things that they're seeing in real time and in real time we're trying to figure out hey should we be doing something different what could we be doing so it's not a static process where we just sit around and sort of wait for them to you know to look at everything and then come back with a report
00h 30m 00s
um this has been really part of the greatest part of the audits is that we have such a good back and forth discussion about the things that they're finding and it's giving us opportunities to really focus on them while they're doing their field work [Music] yes well i had another question um i just wanted to dive a little deeper on what you said about the bac and looking to engage them more on this question because i know that this year we didn't really hear about our um significant decline um in in um minority contracting for lack of a more complicated acronym um until after after it was too late you know after uh some swirl were for the most part allotted and all that um they didn't they didn't have a heads up so so what are what are we thinking in terms of engaging them earlier and having ways to course correct um on this issue so what we are planning we actually um unfortunately had to reschedule our bac meeting that was supposed to be last night um otherwise we would have had it by now but one of the things that's uh scheduled for this bac meeting is a presentation of the proposed uh procurement plan for the benson project so the anderson team here some of the folks that are here on this call will be presenting uh their proposal on how they're going to procure subcontractors and how they're going to meet the business equity aspirational goal and we have allotted a significant amount of time for discussion with the bac afterwards um in large part because we want to pick their brains and see not only how they feel about what's proposed but also any additional ideas they have so that will be coming up with the next bac meeting which we're in the process of scheduling right now so i won't give you a date just yet soon um i have some comments on the just what we're looking at the purchasing and contracting and owami is mentioned here and i'm wondering if we are also talking to the oregon native american chamber of commerce um that all the minority chambers of commerce um and the namco's and the i can't the name is escaping me now but um is it ppg those other community partners to increase i mean i know pbs used to be very active at these events um and i know that you know staffing has made it's it's spread out now amongst many staff and um but i'm wondering if we're are we sending people to these places where they can try to increase their participation so we do on occasion go to owami when we have new um upcoming projects and announce those and we certainly advertise them and go to the trade shows and have tried the open houses including joint open houses with a couple other agencies i i think it's actually more productive for ours for our cmgc partners to go to those open houses when they are about to put out um yeah big packages on the street because my team in the cmgc world my team's involved in the initial initial solicitation of the cmgc partner um and that's not when the bid packages are going out that's that happens far down the road at which point that is run by our cmgc partners so um i think marina can talk a little bit about that but we know that a lot of our partners are out there at those organizations actively speaking about the big crap uh packages that are coming up is that um so is that requirement that they attend these networking opportunities is that also included in the business in the language the rfp language that that expectation that they would you know regularly engage with to build relationships with so it is not required in the rfp language but it has been an absolutely huge part of every single one of their plan plans that they presented to meet our expectations so just to follow up on that they're
00h 35m 00s
required to provide their procurement plan to us and we have to approve the procurement plan the procurement plan does lay out the types of outreach that they're going to engage in the participation in these types of trade shows and open houses and guami and all of the others and in fact um just tell you a little bit about what the contractors do i want to know we provided some slides from a presentation that portis did to the bac in july regarding their certified business participation and the efforts that they made and sort of what came out of that we shared those you had seen them previously but we've provided them again for this meeting um and i just want to note that um marcus klein and blaine grover from ford is over here and and able to answer questions about those slides and the efforts that they made if you have questions about that other things that our contractors do is they engage in partnerships and joint ventures we in particular here today we have anderson construction aaron of course who was introduced brad nile they can both talk about joint venture in regards to grant high school hoffman and pacific mark are engaged in a similar type of venture and we have stephanie coyle here today from hoffman who can answer questions as well uh and i'm going to miss folks here on the call but mark matthews is here on behalf of uh the equity and contracting advisory committee but he is also of course um pacific mark as well and so a couple other things that they do within the contractor side of things um they look very closely at their bid packages that can mean that they are looking at providing smaller bid packages so that they can get out to smaller firms that may not have the bonding capacity yet to do a bigger set of work that allows them to help grow the smaller certified businesses they also do targeted big packages um targeted can be both um uh from a best value selection meaning that they are doing an rfp type selection where they're providing um points for certified business participation in the package um it can mean that they are targeting certified businesses specifically for that work um they can also do rfps one of the other things that our most of our general contractors are doing i mean pretty extensively and have been for a while is they're doing mentorship and education so they are mentoring some of these smaller firms um whether it's a general contractor firm that they're doing a joint venture with or it's subcontractors that they were bringing on board they're doing a significant amount of mentorship and education and um i specifically asked um stephanie coyle from hoffman to be here tonight in case you had questions about that because um hoffman does quite a bit of it and stephanie is able to speak really knowledgeably about the work that they do um in case you have those kinds of questions uh and i think i did not i missed uh mentioning um kanan who is here with anderson who can talk a little bit specifically about the types of outreach um that they're doing as they prepare for the benson gmp and the procurement that's coming up with benson thank you i'd love to help you hear about that from um anderson specifically about benson came nice to meet you um i know you guys uh you guys are i know you're not in a joint venture with colas on this job um it's you don't have a partner right it's not a joint venture it's just anderson is the prime yes yeah i'd like i would love to hear a little bit about some of that procurement and then i'd also just love to hear from our contractors while we have you on this our our our main prime concept for these big you work with a lot of entities in our region public and private and i'd like to hear a little bit about um how we are as an owner on this issue of business equity and um what we do well what what innovative practices others
00h 40m 00s
have that we have not yet adopted or just share a little bit about your relative experience that's that's fantastic i'm interested in in all of that as well okay is that me here you want me to go ahead or you were gonna start off yes sir all right um again cannon chapman business i just hope that this is a safe space to you know um to share your learning and to share your feedback on where we can do better it's not a judgment it's a literally a way for us to you know show up in this space as as good community um you know partners absolutely um and i would say of all the people that are on this call i would probably be the least judgmental person as i might have maybe two years of construction experience i am from portland i do know business more importantly i do know people and so um with some of our efforts that we've initiated in the process of benson some of the things that we identify first of all i would say would be some of the struggles we might have had with grant so we learned from that process and ways to actually get better um even though we had success at grant i think we wound up finishing with about a little bit over 22 percent uh mwesb participation uh we always want to strive to get better in that and there were some gaps that happened between that process and we want to make sure that we identified those even though working with coalesce on grant um didn't necessarily ensure that we would get the support uh and meet the goals it gave us the opportunity to get familiar with each other so we could create that momentum going into the benson project but with that uh one thing that we wanted to identify were the stakeholders within the community that we absolutely wanted to get with to identify who would be some of the key subs that might be able to take on a project to this magnitude so to your point uh we consistently not only went to the army or continue to go i don't want to talk in past tense because this is something that's ongoing but in terms of owami in terms of nemac uh pbdg and particularly in the leadership of those three entities we have spent ample time not only attending those meetings talking to the memberships of those particular groups but actually spending an abundance of time with the leadership with those groups to really be honest in identifying who can actually take on these scopes of work because it's not really the award scopes of work is to make sure that everyone's successful in the process and so um being able to have candid conversations with uh the leadership within these entities has been very beneficial i think i've been able to play a a pretty key part because even though i'm new to construction i'm not new to portland so there's some existing relationships with nate mccoy faye birch these are people that i've known since early childhood that have been mentors to me and actually offered direction uh in terms of guiding me through some of this process which is kind of lent a second arm i guess around anderson and kind of bridging that gap in terms of us making correct decisions uh one thing that we have done internally in terms of anderson is we've just kind of been a little bit more intentional and deliberate about our approach it's one thing to want to be a little bit more diverse and inclusional but being able to uh commit the time that it that it takes that you know actually bring these subs up to speed and to work with them to get through some of these projects even though we're in the pre-construction process with benson right now we've been spending a lot of time just walking through scopes um working on our process of presenting to bac and to pps to um hopefully get approval and right sizing and maybe soul sourcing some things and doing some other things to make sure that we can put people in a position to not only get the work but to be successful in the process and that's been a collaborative effort between the leadership of these organizations and the people who are in direct leadership of these projects uh one thing that we're dealing with uh currently is the fact that just kind of understanding the climate with these subs even though we our goal is to garner a relationship uh with these subs they're not necessarily at a a comfort level with a gc of our magnitude because and they look more at anderson i can only speak for us
00h 45m 00s
as an opportunity more so than a relationship so with the opportunity you don't necessarily want to cut your nose off to spite your face so some things that you may not be as strong at you may not be as open to kind of express the help that you may need or the support that you may need so we've been dependent upon the leadership specifically with uh namak and pbdg faye birch and nate mccoy to be specific in terms of them being involved and joining us in our calls and our meetings so there's a inner support circle directly with the subs that they feel a little bit more confident and then there's also a level of accountability that comes along with that and then us being on the outer circle in terms of making sure that everything is running the way that we need it to run so when we do make our proposals to the people would be whether it's ba c or pps we're all in the same place because what we don't want to do is propose something you guys actually grant it to us and then we still drop the ball that's not good for anyone so making sure that we do have their inner circle in the same room um hearing the same conversations that we're hearing and then actually laying out a game plan to figure out what it is that we can do so if we had a million dollar scope that we wanted to give someone from roofing but they're only ready for our 250 000 the reality is that that's more work for our office but the reality is that that's work that needs to be done if we want to be inclusion or we want to create a more equitable platform moving forward so i would say that's some of the initial things that we've done and it will be an ongoing process but we do have the support of the community uh the leadership in the community and some of these subs as well to just make sure that we get people in the right position for everybody to be successful in the process that's actually a professional service that they provide right like you have uh contracted with them to give you that expertise in that process which is also something we could do as well no we haven't and aaron you can correct me if i'm wrong but i don't think that we're a a sponsor which means we support their activities and their programs and we support their efforts but we're not contracting with them to help us through this process what they're looking for is opportunities for their membership to be able to get these significant scopes of work in order to be part of these projects but we're not actually hiring them to help us make this happen it's actually a pre-existing relationship that we've tried to grow where it's more hands-on and basically it's not a consulting type of situation we need them to be inclusional and what they're doing just so there's a level accountability where it just doesn't look like we're big brother pointing the finger down we're all together trying to grow everyone up and that's helpful but they do offer that i think as a professional service they do they do yeah they do um the other thing that i wanted to mention is you may also have noticed that in recent times your projects are getting bigger which makes it hot big projects can make it more difficult to get small contractors involved because you have to slice off a piece that that fits with that contractor it's more not out telling them what are telling the community what we need we need a big contractor that could come pull down the entire roofing scope to get the percentages that are in the prime agreement the 18 the aspirational goal uh but what we're finding is they're just we're talking about growing businesses here so another mind shift would be think about opportunities are we thinking about the overall dollar volume or can we increase opportunity and so one of the ways that we looked at that on benson um that we're really looking forward to is uh if we would have had to public bid everything in a low bid we could guarantee no opportunity it would all be straight low bid you have to be the lowest number if you don't have the buying power of a large corporation you're already at a disadvantage because you can't buy the materials in bulk you're not shopping at costco right um so we said all right well let's let's go a step further there can we um and i'm glad to see that pps seems to be opening some um different ways of thinking that other public organizations are um considering um or have already implemented and also i see the organization just in going from grant to benson i see some doors opening which is exciting to us because it gives us the ability to get that work into the minority contractors hands so one concept is the set-aside package
00h 50m 00s
that says we're still going to have competition it could be low bid it could be qualifications or value based but we're only going to bid this to minority contractors that gives them a safer zone and a more evening play playing field still with that scenario you want three bids you may not be able to get three bids um in let's say plaster repair or something like that there may be only one plaster company so what we're asking and under benson scenario we would have had 11 set aside packages we were able to double that number to 22 by saying what if we direct contracted you tell us you're interested you prove to us what you what your capacity is and we will figure out a way or ask a way that we can verify that we're getting fair market pricing because we have to be good to the community that supported the bond they can't think that they're that this is just whatever price you want so what we've asked for in our contracting plan and we're waiting for feedback is if we get a third party um estimator to verify that this is market pricing then can we go ahead and and uh direct contract so again we went from no just hard bid low dollar that would be zero guaranteed opportunities if we did set aside packages we think that's 11 package opportunities and if we were able to negotiate um with some bidders that we think are highly qualified and very interested in the project that would be an additional 11 up to 22. thank you very much for that i'm going to move this along um in the interest of time um obviously this is a top topic that you know there's a lot of questions out there i know i would appreciate sounds like some other people here might appreciate regular updates and the other thing i would just ask is if we could disaggregate our mwesb data because i think we know you know every every public agency in town um has most of their dollars going to emerging small businesses and um and less dollars going to minority owned and women owned so if we could disaggregate that data so we know exactly you know where those dollars are going rather than them together i think it would be helpful for me in any case um to understand but let's let's move on to our um next topic even though i think we could talk about this for a long time and that would be um our 2020 bond execution plan overview um i'm not sure who's presenting that close out this conversation sure thanks sorry um first of all thank you very much to our our contractor friends for joining us for this conversation um speaking for myself from the board perspective um this is a really critical issue for us right now um our numbers um for this year are uh half what they were last year for our minority contracting and they're half on our bond work and they're about half of what our aspirational goal is which to me is um really a crisis and it's really something that we need to figure out how to be the owner of choice for our minority and emerging small business contractor from this community so um i think we are starting to give a lot of attention to it but any feedback that you all will provide us and whatever the panels i think are helpful about how we can be a better owner in this regard um would be would be really welcome um and yeah that's all i wanted to say but i wanted to put a fine point on it that that these are these numbers are um really precipitously much slower than they have been and i don't know if the benson gm gmp is um going to be negotiated by the end of this fiscal year marina uh by the end of this fiscal year yes so we'll get it well but again the numbers and is doing they're going to get in on our 1920 numbers here the numbers are based on invoices paid okay all right well then we're gonna have to move forward after uh 1920 but anyway thank you all for for sharing your perspectives thanks michelle and thank you yeah it's um it's something that i hear um a lot when i'm out in the community talking about this potential bond and and there's a concern there that our numbers are low so um why don't we move on though thank you everybody for your attention and innovation and great thinking and questions um we're going to get a bond a bond execution plan overview now i'm not sure
00h 55m 00s
who's um delivering that is that you dan that is me um with marina's help um and so one uh i'll just say quick thank you for everybody for sure on being here um we wanted to have a good discussion so there's a lot of value there for everyone uh so appreciate that uh the bond execution plan i think this topic will will be fairly quick um but uh there's lots of questions we'll answer those questions uh the reason that we wanted to bring this topic forward was you know we we sort of envisioned a scenario where a week from now if we're in the position where we have passed another bond without committee members might naturally ask what are we doing now what our next step so we just want to give a little bit of insight into what those next steps look like and specifically a deliverable that's that staff is putting together and that the committee will see is the bond execution plan um so the bond execution plan in short version is really some more details around how the district will complete the work uh scope schedule uh budget of course financial constraints uh down you can see some bullet points uh what the outline that we have in place now procurement strategies stakeholder engagement all these components will go into this bond execution plan uh and it gives visibility into the intentionality around how we're going to manage how we're going to complete the work so we have a draft of it now uh we're continuing to work on it and work with and there's lots of different people who work on it certainly not just uh osm that puts us together uh but the intention is to come back uh at the committee meeting in december and have a discussion about the plan then so we just wanted uh the committee members here to know that if the bond does pass next week that there is work that's going forward and there's going to be a more robust discussion around these different components of completing the work now one piece of the plan that we thought that we would point out is each scope of the work that's in the bond is going to have its own we'll call a high level schedule every scope of work is going to be carried out differently and what we will do is is provide some more information around that sequencing of events every scope works going to have some version of assessment engagement and prioritization at the front end uh then planning and design and permitting and then implementation what i think is worthwhile to point out is um that assessment and engagement that prioritization what that phase does is gives all of us more detail around what exactly are you going to do with with these funds and so after that initial phase is when we come back to this committee and provide more detail about those those specific scopes of work uh also what happens maybe you can't see because of this thing here uh at the bottom of this little graph we just put on mechanical as an example of scope of work is this initial work so it's going to take us time we've got lots of information uh about our mechanical systems about how poorly many of them function we don't have a bunch of detail on how best to address a lot of them so it's going to that assessment and that prioritization is going to take some time in the meantime there's going to be needs for us to expand those funds those mechanical funds if we have a boiler uh being in the year that needs to be replaced we're going to replace that boiler and that's going to be an appropriate use of those funds so that's what we call initial work uh and you know we will make sure to do a good job of keeping this committee and others updated what those that kind of initial low-hanging fruit if you will work that that needs to happen um but we want one to let you know that this detail of a schedule is coming forward for every one of these scope of work so you'll be able to understand oh i can see this sequence of events because as the bond passes it's going to take time to do the assessment it's going to take time for us to set up the financial systems uh to hire staff to complete the work so a lot of work will be happening it's just not always the visible work that happens right away so that so the intent of this topic was to just give some context and some visibility into that work before you actually get to see some of these work products i think that's it so any any questions on that maybe i'll stop and ask marina what i forgot because i'm sure i forgot some good stuff in there i don't think you forgot anything but i think it's really just to say that there's a lot of work that's occurring in the background and um you know if the bond does pass next week while we're not going to be stepping out and spending money on projects the next day we certainly have been putting together a plan and we'll be talking through that plan with you
01h 00m 00s
at the next bomb committee and that plan is really intended to to give you the framework of how we implement um it's not just a continuation of the bonds that we have done in 2012 and 2017 because we have some unique components to it with technology and curriculum in particular and so we're we're really looking very closely at how we ensure that all of these things are done um consistently with transparency with accountability and um within all of the sort of rules and laws that we need to follow so it should have a significant amount of detail and and it'll also kind of give you the road map for how we will be moving forward um to execute that bond thank you i thought the visual was really helpful um so in other words if somebody says what are you doing you can say well there's all this pre-work this assessment piece the engagement piece you know for people that are maybe um familiar with the development cycle so thank you for that and i guess that brings us to our last topic which is rich oh sorry go ahead andrew and then i have a question no it's just a really quick question will we be um will the district be amending its cip sometime this fiscal year if the bond passes yes they're working on that we're working in conjunction with the capital improvement plan we're also working in conjunction with the efforts around the long range facility plan so we are trying to coordinate all of those different components together as we're moving forward okay great now i appreciate this piece and the work that's going on behind the scenes and i think it'll be really useful for the community as well for us to lay out the the the implementation plan that you're putting together and really show people you know here's the here's the the multi-year spending plan of this you know very large investment and and then we can hold ourselves accountable to to meet those timelines as well so appreciate that thanks long-range facilities plan when we're able to take some of those most urgent um items that otherwise might have come out of the general fund and include them in our bond funded work um my question marina on your last point was where you're talking about structures to put in place for um in the event that we are about to take on that much more work is i'd like to hear more and have conversation in this committee about our um our structure for construction management um i know we've made some changes lately there have been a couple of those contracts that have come to the board broken down but i'd like to learn more about to what extent are we looking to develop our own internal capacity um to what extent are we going to continue to rely on an external consulting model um how are we making those decisions how are we breaking up those contracts um that's something that um i i i'm interested in and i don't have a lot of information about are you looking to have that discussion right now or at a at a future meeting um it did not get put on the agenda for this meeting so it can wait till the next time so we can have it for both um what what are we doing in the present and for the 2017 bond that's a little different than the past and then how might we envision it um for the future too sure happy to have that discussion at the next meeting so we'll make sure that that makes it to the agenda yes madam chair can i ask a question yes i was just going to ask if there are any more questions and please go ahead um thank you um actually i want to just share um something with staff and then um ask a question that's i being asked frequently just given my role at the bond is that given the breadth of the types of projects that we're doing whether it's the accessibility the curriculum materials the it there is uh questions from community members about and staff and just stakeholders um about um engagement in the process um whether it's the accessibility or ada improvements about getting somebody with uh universal divine design knowledge or um stakeholders that have some expertise how is it that people would um those individuals engage with the district or have a seat at the table i know for example um some of our teachers and educators have been interested in like how is the curriculum adoption going to occur and will there be you know places at the table for um stakeholders to be a part of that conversation going forward
01h 05m 00s
i'll i'll answer it at a high level marina if you want to dive in with some details feel free and the high level answer is it's going to depend on the scope of the project and that's uh one of the reasons why we want to show like mechanical because it was easy um as an example of a timeline that's going to have some assessment it's probably not going to have a lot of community engagement when we look at our mechanical system priorities uh whereas our other scopes of work will uh we're having conversations right now specifically about technology and curriculum how does that development come to place how do stakeholders get involved there uh for a couple reasons one that's youth that's uh new to the bond the our capital program hasn't had those components before uh but also timeline wise those are a couple of scopes of work they're going to want to implement uh quickly uh so we're we're still developing those uh i can say with a very high level of confidence there will be opportunities to do that in fact i had conversations with with pat uh here just in the last couple weeks about how they can be involved even more in processes around the modernization one thing i'll say that was nice about that conversation was i was able to give them some information about what we do now they didn't know that and you know there's a lot of positive feedback like i didn't realize you did that like well we didn't do it you know four years ago we started it two years ago and so uh again i think you know that that's you know headed in a good direction um so i think that's probably wrapping up my high level response of it will depend it will have to work through and we are working through uh those different scenarios um marina i mean yeah i would just add again it's very specific to the scope of work and so the type of community engagement that we're looking at for the ada scope of work is going to be different than what we do for the modernizations right so um we have uh some fairly um standardized community engagement processes for modernization projects um but as we start dealing with other scopes of work it's going to look a little bit different and so we're having those conversations right now um we are specifically calling out community engagement in the bond execution plan and we're trying to really think through what that keynote should look like um understanding that it's not just within osm that this is a district conversation and so we're having these conversations um with of course our community engagement uh department right uh as well as senior leadership and executive leaders too that's fantastic um it's hard to get the whole community to come out for hvac work but it's really easy to get um the community members and goals around you know more exciting topics um say when they said the engagement for that would be a lot less it's like well that's merciful yeah none i mean you could have the best pizza in that meeting and no one will show up oh you might be surprised how excited people get about having warm or cold buildings that's that's true i was guessing with that particular scope of work that you do you do hear from people when the systems fail especially teachers yeah um it's uncomfortable so um so that's great i'm really glad to hear that you're going to be kind of dynamic in your approach and i hope that um you know as we're as we come into this next conversation around the bond um accountability committee you know this is another business case for diversifying that group because we have someone from the um that knows americans with disabilities compliance knows universal design we have members of other communities that we're testing it'll make for a really robust um and productive group um and so i hope we're very intentional it sounds like you're thinking about the engagement and being very intentional with um how you'll do that per project thank you um so we're going to move on we have about 20 minutes left and this timing is perfect um to talk about have a discussion around the appointment of the new um bac members um and the chair and the process to restructure the bac reporting um to better align with um with this group and and just the business process yeah thanks um a couple topics about uh the bac so we worked and do have an application uh be it the new member bac application uh live and available on our website it's on the it's on the oversight bond accountability committee website we can pour that out to anyone if they want it
01h 10m 00s
um so that is that's live now we are actively recruiting and accepting applicants uh timeline process wise what we anticipate is at our committee meeting in december uh we'll we'll have the committee will have some discussion around the applicants the new members uh and also the chair that application is also an opportunity to signify you're interested in a chair position between now and then uh we'll we'll meet michelle and and marina and i will are planning on meeting and taking a look at the applicants that we have so we can properly form that discussion on the 10th if we have 10 applicants versus 100 applicants that conversation might need to look differently but but that's what um that's what the intent is and so to have a discussion on the tent and then make a recommendation for appointments uh at the full board and i would encourage everybody to you know if they know somebody that might be a great fit for this uh volunteer position to to share the link with them um we want to be very intentional we would love the chair to be someone that works really well you know with dana marina and um uh has the time to devote to this uh to this work um diverse applicants are are always welcome um and i think that we're we've had a discussion about you know what type of expertise um would be helpful um i know with the audit committee we used to have a requirement that you had auditing experience but we removed that as a requirement because it's limiting for one it reduces the the number of and diversity of people that you might get and and people regular people have great things to add to conversations that that'll be happening around that table can i assess from a timing perspective does does the december 10th committee meeting leave time to get that decision made about particularly about a chair and board approval prior to the existing chair uh leaving i believe that the existing chair uh i i believe his term is up december 31st correct is that correct right um but he does stay on the bac correct he does not he will he'll turn off the bac but he could the term is only for the the term limit is only for the chair isn't that correct in the charter the the the charter has has two terms it's eight years for any member and then uh the chair term i'm going to forget offhand i i want to say it's three years um and that's relatively new with the last change to the charter uh the chair term oh that was original for um committee members eight years eight years yeah and has mr spellman served eight years or is he just choosing to go off he'll be eight years he's yeah he and um i think one other our original committee members dick steinberg is the original one he's been with us a few years now tom peterson is the other original member so yeah i would just i just want to make sure that that if we discuss it in committee on the 10th we have time to make a decision make a recommendation to the board and have a board um make a decision before it i think there is just the one uh dan and marina just one bac meeting once we get this one rescheduled from from yesterday that that's the last bac meeting of the year is that right that is correct okay so we we do so there is we just need to have a chair in place before that first meeting of of the new year i just it feels like we're pushing in a little bit um i don't know if there's a there's a better solution i will also just say for the record i don't think i don't support term limits in general for elected officials i don't support them on these types of committees either i think this is the way we end up losing really good people with lots of knowledge who can actually see bonds from beginning to end but i understand that is the existing policy so that's a different conversation if we want to make that change going forward i i would actually support consideration of making that change um so maybe that's something we can talk about at our next meeting are you talking about changing term limits because i feel quite differently about it um yes i am i think it would be worth having a conversation about that yeah i do too and i also um yes i mean we have good talent but i think that if we are looking at diversifying our are the people that contribute to decision making and we we let people sit in a chair for you know 10 12 14 years that we're we're missing out there's an opportunity cost there that um you know allows
01h 15m 00s
doesn't allow us to bring in new thinking um new expertise develop a leadership pipeline um the city of portland i know just recently a year ago let's say did an audit of all of it are the committees and some of the committee members had been um in place for 27 years and so when we're looking to as a community we're looking for different outcomes we can't expect different outcomes with the same like set you know decision makers at the table so i'm i'm in favor of of of terming people off thanking them for their service and appreciating that and opening up opportunities for people that don't look like you know a diversity of of of of expertise and lived experience i would like to have that conversation because i don't i don't see those as mutually exclusive we we've always i think had um open seats on the bac as we do now and i don't know about the depth of our applicant pool now um but i i agree with everything you just said michelle but i don't see them as mutually exclusive yeah i i would agree i think there's an end both there that that i i agree with you if our committees are not diverse and they're not diverse enough so we need to figure out ways to diversify although there are open seats that we can be doing that with if we're doing good outreach but i think the term limits work against diversity as well if you have a diverse panel or committee um you're going to lose that talent as well um you know eight years in the future which which again may be a detriment to the district so well i i like to think of us um having this expansive like you know there's a lot of talent in portland it's not limited to the people around the table and you know personally i would just like to see yeah i would like to see a rotating cast of of talent come in and and help us get this work done it's it's my own my own um opinion so speaking of speaking of talent um you know we will likely have um we only have one position open on the audit committee and if we have more than one applicants um some of those we may want to um just given their interest in pbs and the audit committee if they you know aren't selected for the audit committee they may be also good members potentially for the bac um bringing strong set of skills so maybe we can shift them over as well that's great um okay so the question i i don't know that we answered your question um director scott about the timing i i don't know if there is an answer it was just more of a generic concern i just want to make sure that we i just want to make sure we're planning to have a fully functioning bac in place um by the end of the year because given you know i'm hopeful the bond will pass and i think it's just going to be really essential so and i think that we did a backwards mapping on this so i think that when we did the math that it did work out that we would have a chair in place by the end of the year it will be tight i think it's pretty cool orbit will be tight yes let's be honest um so i don't know who wants to leave this discussion to process the restructuring of the reporting the bac reporting yeah i'll do it and i think we can probably hit this one quickly but again we'll answer any questions is so one of the uh efforts uh that is underway and getting more underway is the effort to update the quarterly bac documents and so we meet every quarter we provide them uh staff provides them with a set of standard documents and it's kind of been on on the list for a while to go through and update those and certainly if there is a successful bond next month or next week that's going to be even uh more important to do that so process wise uh we've already had some uh initial discussions we're going to have more discussions here over the next couple of months of towards the end of this year uh draft some sample uh updates to those materials and then beginning of the year as we welcome new members we potentially assume new scope of work uh have a new chair um we will bring those members up to speed we will update those documents and find oh and we bring it up here because it really is a three-party discussion it's staff it's the bac but it's the board you know the bac reports to the board we work at the pleasure of the board and so it's a you know important that we have those three parties and that's why we want to bring it up here just so the committee is familiar with what the schedule is is there any discussion around um what dan just shared or anything else for the good of the
01h 20m 00s
order i'm i'm uh i'm getting a reputation for ending early um i'd love to keep up this would be the second in the streak you're making me look really bad michelle for this whole last year we went over but i appreciate your efficiency i love it yeah this is the second time in a row does is there anything else for the good of the order and seeing none i i think we're we're adjourned all right thanks thanks for reading thanks our partners for joining us nice to see you for joining us


Sources

Retrieved from "https://wiki.sunshinepps.org/index.php?title=2020-10-29_PPS_School_Board_School_Improvement_Bond_Committee_Meeting&oldid=10124"
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Center for Transparent Analysis and Policy
Powered by MediaWiki
Powered by Semantic MediaWiki