 webinar recording has started. We are live and we are recording. Great. Good. Good morning. I am Jonathan Salvon. I'm the chair of the OPM subcommittee for the Amherst School Building Committee. I will let the folks on the committee introduce themselves quickly and then let you all do sure selves and and get started on your presentation. And since I went top down as people appear last time, I'm going to go from the bottom up. And so I'll let Dwayne introduce himself. Hello. Good morning. My name is Dwayne Chambl and I am the out of school time coordinator for the district of Amherst. Next, at least on my screen is Steve. I'm Steve Shriver. I am a town counselor. I'm the vice chair of the elementary school building committee. And my day job is I'm the chair of architecture at UMass. Then Kathy. I'm Kathy Shane and I'm chair of the full building committee. I'm also on the town council. Steve is on the town council as well. And Anthony Anthony Delaney, procurement officer and member of the committee. My name is Tripp Elmore. I'm project director proposed for this project from Dorn Whittier. Christina D'Angelo, project manager with Dorn Whittier. Michael Cox, project manager with Dorn Whittier. Rachel Donner, assistant project manager with Dorn Whittier. Hey, good morning folks. Terry Hartford. I'll be the outside project manager doing instruction. Okay. Mike, can you load our presentation? We should be good. Everybody see that? Yeah. Terrific. Okay. Well, I'm going to get started here. I wanted to introduce Dorn Whittier first and then we're going to introduce our team members with a little more detail. I started Dorn Whittier management partners 11 years ago. And basically came from a perspective that the owners and I had learned this when I was at Turner running a large job and an owner led company really brings another level of responsibility to the projects and creates a little different feeling for the project. So I started this business going after public schoolwork. 90% of our business is based in mass school buildings and the majority of it with MSBA funded projects. And I wanted to start a business where again, the owners were leading the charge and were actively managing the day to day work with the project, because I found that it gave better results and more accountability from an OPM standpoint to the owner so that we would build better relationships with our owners. And we found that that has been true as we've gone through the last 11 years. I also thought that we could provide a better service because I'm coming very much from a construction background I'll go into in my introduction with my experience. But I'm joining a firm that had an architectural arm to it and your projects are balanced with a construction firm and an architectural firm to deliver the necessary services in order to make these projects go forward. Well, if your OPM comes from a background where they know how to do both elements of that execution plan, we can manage better. And so that was kind of my fundamental thoughts when I was putting this business together. And for you and for this community, I think that the team that we have presenting to you today brings all of the necessary skill sets and experience to really develop a tremendous project in the design phase and execute it very well in the construction phase. So with that, we're going to introduce ourselves. Like if you'll go to the next slide. My background is in construction, as I've mentioned, I've spent over 25 years in large corporate construction. I've built projects for Intel and California, the cleanest clean room in the world at the time. And I built high rises in the the and urban settings. I've spent the last 10 years building schools, excuse me, last 13 years building schools. I finished up my career with Turner before starting this business on a large school in Newton. I think the background is relevant to you because I can see things early on that are likely to occur as I'm watching projects go forward. And that kind of vision of having six to eight months of knowledge of if we don't do something today, this is the likely outcome brings real leadership to the projects that I'm on, and really has a risk management side to it that you don't necessarily find unless you have that kind of experience. My understanding of cost and schedules and risk management brings an insight that allows me to be a true team leader and hold the others on the team accountable. And I promise to bring that to you every day because that's my involvement in the projects I get involved with that introduce Christina. Hi, everyone. I'm Christina D'Angelo again, project manager with Dorn Whittier. I've been working in the design and construction industry for over 15 years now. And I've been working with Dorn Whittier for the past five. I've worked on six school projects with human wealth, or which were MSBA Corp projects. And part of my expertise and experience is knowing and understanding the MSBA process. We have a high level of understanding their requirements. And we work with them as they are refined and further developed. I'm a very hands on person. You'll see me at all of the meetings. I'll be involved from the project from day one to ribbon cutting. I've experienced with working with community involvement, working groups, the SBC, budget schedule and risk management. And my job will be to manage the work and deliverables of our team to ensure that all of the expectations of the SBC are being met. I'm currently working on a school project right now with an 18 member SBC group with has an industry professional. They're an extremely involved SBC in the project and have been since day one. Many of these members have worked on previous construction projects in their past. And I'm told that we're an exception of their team and our level of customer service exceeds anything that they've ever experienced before. So I look forward to working with you and your team on this project. And with that, I'll turn it over to Mike Cox. Thank you, Christina. So I'm Mike Cox. As I mentioned, I'll be a project manager of controls. Since Jordan, Jordan Whittier, I've had the opportunity to work on seven projects for which our MSBA projects in this role that I will serve for you. And in my role, I'll be maintaining the budget from the conception of our contract all the way through the MSBA audit at the end of the at the very end. I'll be using our proprietary budget system that you'll hear us referred to as the dashboard and the dashboard was built by us to be a perfect mirror to the MSBA's pro pay system, which I'm sure you've heard a little bit about now, if not have already dealt with. But it's a more detailed and transparent version of that that will actually give you login access to so you can review it in real time anytime you want on your phone. If you're just curious, it's fully transparent and up to date. And then in addition, I'll also be working with you and ultimately handle the responsibility for the monthly MSBA submissions, which obviously is a very key component to getting your reimbursement in a timely fashion. So that'll maximize both your return speed and the accuracy to help us along at the very end in audit. And with that, I will pass it to Rachel. Thank you, Mike. Hi, everyone. My name is Rachel Donner. I am the Assistant Project Manager. Since joining Doran Whittier, I have worked on three MSBA jobs with this team in Lexington, Manchester, and Peabody. My role on the Fort River Elementary School project would be working directly with the project managers and assisting them with communication and proper documentation. I will provide documentation for all of our meetings and conference calls. These meeting minutes are critical and they ensure transparency with team members as well as the community. We have seen previously that these components lead to a successful partnership and I'm truly looking forward to collaborating and working with this committee. With that, I'll turn it over to Terry. Technologically challenged. Good morning, everyone. It's Terry again. As I mentioned, I'll be the on-site project manager during construction. You know, I've had the pleasure of doing that role on two different projects for Doran Whittier having come from the energy business where I spent 25 years building power plants pretty much around the world. My role on-site is really to manage the process of construction and that's working with CM, the designer, all the key stakeholders. Ultimately, my goal is to deliver what we've designed for on behalf of the owner. It really is to minimize disruption for all of you. I'm just coming off the completion of a job that we're probably going to spend a fair bit of time talking about in Lexington, which I know your design firm actually put in front of you back in 2018, which is the Mariah Hastings School. It's Massachusetts first net zero energy project and it's a very interesting project. We're spending a lot of time talking about it. I also wanted to message just on a personal level. I've lived as a parent and a resident of a community that's very similar to yours. I live in a little town called West Newbury. We have a regional school here that years ago, the towns decided not to go forward with a new school, which was not suggesting to my liking. About five years ago, they got back into the MSBA project. Parents and folks in this town really got themselves together and worked towards getting the word out. They worked directly with the design firm and the architect and the OPM. While we weren't the OPM on that job, I'm happy to say that Doran Whittier was the architect of the Pentucket Middle High School and over, we did manage to get the vote for the three towns. That project is being built right now. I was just there last week with Brad, Dor, who's the principal owner in the architect side and it's a wonderful feeling to put all that hard work in and then realize a dream and see the impact the school is going to have on your community. I know from a personal parent perspective and a professional perspective, Doran Whittier, this is kind of what we do on all sides of our business, which is to have communities develop their dreams and put them into place. So, very much look forward to working with you on doing that and I'm sure we'll be taking questions as we go through this, but Tripp, I think we're back to you. Okay. Yeah. So, that's basically our 15 minute introduction and we can go to your questions unless you have anything for us before we do that. Nope. We'll dive right in. Anthony, you want to start off with the first one? I will do that. Could you describe one particularly challenging elementary school project for which you served as OPM and talk about some of the lessons you learned there? Sure. So, we have that first question. If you can just go back one slide, Mike. So, from a perspective of challenging projects, I think every project has its own challenges and one of the ups that I started out with when I started Doran Whittier management partners was the Bancroft Elementary School. We are currently working on the Memorial Elementary School in Manchester and as we've mentioned, the Maria Hastings Elementary School in Lexington. Each one of these has plenty of challenges that had to be overcome and managed, but I think the best one to start with is Maria Hastings because it's very relevant to several aspects of your project. So, when we look at the Maria Hastings Elementary School in Lexington, next slide, Mike. I just sort of will lay it out. You see a rendering of the site. You see obviously in red letters the new building. There's a parking lot and turnaround. You can make out the silhouette of a black line which is representative of the existing school. You can see from just the layout on the slide that there are various things to deal with including wetlands which has similarities to the Fort River Elementary School. There is a tight-knit community surrounding the actual site. The site itself, once you put the building and parking lot and playground in place, doesn't really have much left there other than a baseball field. And so the site is significantly constricted when you consider that you're trying to build a new building while operating an existing elementary school. You know, just the simple things of moving the school folks in and out every day while you're moving the building components in and out every day and the workers coming and going every day. And you have to build separation. Obviously safety is the paramount concern. There were a lot of elements and a lot of this has to do with the construction phase or the design phase of how do you actually orchestrate make this safe place for the kids, make it a viable building site for the construction, keep separation, keep the neighbors as minimally disturbed as possible and how do you have relief valves if all of a sudden something comes up and something will come up where you have to put an all-stop and make things make things right before you get going again. So that's just in talking about the site and how do you overcome these kinds of challenges? You address them early on and you play a lot of what-if scenarios and you say well if this is going to happen then we are going to have to react in such a way and everybody has to be aware that that's what's going to happen. Another factor which again is similar to Amherst is that Lexington had a lot of community involvement and there were special interest committees formed, one of them being sustainable Lexington where they really wanted to influence how this building was going to be constructed, how it was going to be managed over the long term, what its energy uses were going to be and the direction that they came with in the feasibility study stage ended up causing the selectmen in Lexington to adopt the net zero building and to be willing to explore the options to get to a net zero building and as this is one of the groundbreaking buildings there are a lot of factors that were unknowns at that time and I would say they're still being developed as we go into the net zero world. We'll talk about the net zero in the following questions. Overall this project was a grand success and I think it's largely due to the level of planning and anticipation of the kind of issues that we were going to face. Any other questions that I can answer on this? Hey Tripp, I might just add one thing. I think one of the best things about this project for our team is that we've all worked on this job together. That's a great point. We have a very cohesive team in terms of how we manage our various roles and so I can give you an example. Early on in the project Cristina really leads that communication with the community and eventually you move into construction and somebody in my position kind of takes over and when you look at a project like that you see all those houses. All those people have names and Cristina and I know all of them and it's getting involved with the community so that you can as Tripp mentioned minimize disruption and disturbance and so you know I think we're all super proud of this project because it came out you know under budget on schedule it's a real testament to a lot of hard work. Great. Okay, the next question. Yep, glad to. I'm going to read that one. Describe your experience with net zero energy capable schools or other net zero projects. Please also discuss the costs, the cost considerations and how these were managed as part of the process. So again we're going to focus on the Lexington Maria Hastings elementary school as our net net zero ready building. So initially when we went into feasibility as a starting place as every community I think does looks at lead or mass chips and lead silver is the minimum and you get two percent points from the MSBA which I know you're aware of. Well early in the feasibility it was initially said well what is the possibility of us going to the gold so we started from that standpoint and as I mentioned we were getting involved in the feasibility the sustainable Lexington group got support locally to go to a net zero place for the building which is a significant step and you know I don't think it's probably that much different than the bylaws that you passed for net zero in Amherst so there's some similarities there there has to be a commitment from the community to actually go that go that route so when when that was introduced we then quickly went away from traditional fossil fuel based systems to an all electric building and when we started to explore the all electric building various other components come into play and and the ideas of whether it's biofuel or geothermal certainly PV systems all come quickly to the top but what also comes into play is that these are all codependent with other systems if your building for example isn't super tight or insulated with efficient systems these other systems don't function in the same capacity that that you would expect them to so there's a there's a whole model of how you do this that is really important to follow in order to achieve that net zero energy consumption place and it starts largely in the in the world of energy conservation first and foremost and and that directly comes into play with with the costs we can go to the next slide so when we look at costs we look at the overall net zero process and i'm going to call it a process because it has so many components that are linked together in order to make the achievement achievement of net zero possible and when you look at them independently they don't contribute in the same way so it's really a synergistic type of model you're looking at the costs on a building i think you have to look at them collectively as they are inter interdependent on one another so the the process that you've that we followed and i think that is pretty standard in the industry is that you have to start first with energy conservation and energy conservation for a net zero project starts with trying to make the building needs somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 it varies from you know which expert you listen to but it's saying take the energy consumption down by roughly 40 percent and how do you do that you do it with certainly the building envelope and that simple insulation is cheap and and you know we all can can visualize that having a lighting and lighting control so that you're you're effectively using your lighting systems and it's an interesting quandary here because when you add daylighting in you're talking about obviously putting windows in windows are your major heat loss on a building so you have this fine balance of how much glass type of glass and and how do you minimize your heat loss or heat gain in the summertime if you're using it in the summer effectively and that's part of this calculation energy recovery is is an absolute must if you're heating the air coming into the building and exhausting it because you're you're really focused on indoor air quality you want to recover some of that heat loss as it's being exhausted and then having active radiant heat and cooling as part of the design of the building is is critical after you go through that sort of analysis of the building you really wanted to find your baseline parameters by which you can benchmark how you are measuring what what the costs of the building are so obviously cost of energy and the projections in a standard model whether it's electricity or whether it's oil or whether it's gas need to be projected out 20 to 40 years the parameters use of the space is the building going to be used from six to six is it six to ten is it seven days a week is being used in the summer come into play as to what your energy use is going to be and then really understanding what is your energy load when the building is occupied versus when it's hot or when it's partially being used comes into that equation of what are the costs and how do you manage them because this is a factor of that's driving costs then obviously it's very critical to make the to buy very high energy equipment components and products you want high efficiency products in the building that run your daily activities and then you start to explore the alternative renewable energy sources whether it's the PV whether it's geothermal in order to satisfy your building needs when you do all of that then you you actually have the math and you actually have the components to determine are you getting to net zero and what are your costs because at that point once you've made those kind of decisions you can then do a cost benefit analysis and understand what the real costs are to go to net zero and and that is a process that we would manage you're going to do it very openly transparently in committee meetings and we're going to document it and and it's going to be choice points for the community and the committee to decide upon which direction you want to go are there any questions yes i have the next one so this is a two-part question what techniques or activities have you used to engage the broader community and what strategies have you used to help communities reach final approval and in in your description can you use specific examples of challenges successes or failures yes so just some examples of techniques and activities we've done on other projects that we're very familiar with obviously we're we're going to make sure that we would do the same same process with you on your project is developing a website which we already know that there is some information on the town website regarding the project as well as the sbc but it's something that we would want to develop with you would be a spot for us to manage all the information about the project as far as the process and what's how to get the community involved and so you can see we developed here already a website for the project that would provide a landing spot for anyone that is doing a search about the Fort River Elementary School and what that means as far as involvement with the MSBA with the team and and really who we are so we did we did our due diligence to create a website for you so you could see how easy it was for us and how we have a great understanding of this process and how it's our job to manage and and provide type of forum for you for the project and so I know that whenever I'm looking up any information about a project or something that I want to make sure that I can find something right away and so this would be something that would easily be able to find and search for any community member or we could broadcast it out to the greater community so that way they can find out anything that they would want to know about the project and we regularly update that for you that includes you know community meetings community forums how to get in contact with us my own really all the important information that anyone would be looking for looking up a website I also point out that we do have capabilities on the website to provide it as bilingual in different languages as well so I think that that's important for anyone when they are looking up information about a project as everyone's needs another technique or activity we use is community forums so I can't stress enough community involvement from day one is so important on any school project and so those forums and the meetings are a way for us to engage them and to ultimately hear from them as far as how they feel and how their input is important for the project and an engaged and informed community is a huge asset to any project so ultimately we want to make sure that we're continuing those meetings and forums from the very beginning of the project to ensure that they're being involved in the process and that we're hearing from them on a regular basis another technique would be informational flyers we understand that there are all different to inform different members from the communities but there also might be some members that don't have access to or don't have a computer and they might be different age groups that regularly relies on a flyer or some type of informational packet or anything that we can provide to the community that gives them the information about upcoming dates or milestones or upcoming meetings and I think it's important that we're reaching the entire community in all different aspects with different kind of techniques and activities to make sure that they're engaged throughout the process the second part of your question talks about the strategies we've used to help communities reach final approval and so I've done a lot of research as far as what you've done as a community and as a group and as a district to engage the community and so we know that you did have an unsuccessful vote at one point and so ultimately I think that you've done an outstanding job by having direct you know communication listening sessions you shared with the local newspaper you had your district website you have weekly newsletters you do surveys and so you've done a fantastic job of already outreaching and doing what you can to engage the community and so what we'll want to make sure that we do is to continue that and to ensure that we're continuously serving also the community because that's really important to understand where people stand on the project does it mean having one school doesn't mean combining the two schools and so we just want to continue to understand the majority and what that means to ensure the direction of the project and to ensure that we have a successful vote on this project as well and I think probably the most important part of that communication with the community and serving is to describe the MSBA process we understand that you have already shared through the feasibility study the SOI kind of forum and what that means but we want to educate what it means to partner with the MSBA the benefits of working with the MSBA and what are the risks of not passing the vote again which leads to continued maintenance escalation because if something doesn't pass you're going to have construction costs and escalation continuously over any time then ultimately potential loss of MSBA reimbursement and support so all of those things are so important in engaging the community but involving them and them understanding the MSBA process I cannot stress enough is so important to ensure that we have a successful vote for this project the second part of your next question was describe challenges successes or failures with specific examples so I'm proud to say we're proud to say that Dorn Whittier has successfully passed the vote on every single project we've ever done the first time and so a challenge that we worked on we worked on a technical high school in Canton mass that was a nine sending town district city and town district and so we knew it was going to be very hard the very first time to get every single city and town on board for the very first vote and so what we did was from the very beginning like I just said about all the community involvement websites forums etc we also met with think comms and managers and administrators we talked about you know what their what their taxpayers were going to be paying what their percentage was as part of the project what their long-term debt exclusions might be etc and so we went over all that information as transparent as possible with them from the very beginning to ensure that we got a successful vote so it was very challenging but in the end we were successful to ensure that we passed the vote for the first time for all nine communities and then a success that I'd like to share is that as Tripp had mentioned we were working on a elementary school project in Manchester and it's a two-town sending district school so the two towns had originally submitted two SOIs in the beginning and the Manchester school was chosen based off of the need for the project and so we worked really closely with both towns from the very beginning knowing that one town was going to have to not only vote and approve for it but pay for this brand new school and another town to support their district when they still have another school in town that they're going to eventually work towards getting into the MSBA pipeline and so with all of our success on the other projects that I've spoken about we were successful to get both towns to approve the project the first time and ultimately drilled a brand new school and just one of those towns and so that was really hard but also a huge success for our our team and for the process based off of the communication and the transparency from the very beginning does anyone have any questions I think we're going to keep moving with with our question okay yeah so I get question number four have you or your firm ever been terminated from a project or had one end without proceeding if yes discussed any lessons or insights gained from this experience okay and I'll talk about this one so we have never been terminated from a project so that ends that discussion there's no termination in our history as of Dorn Whittier management partners had a project in Spencer East Brookfield that did not proceed into design development it didn't even get into a position where they could vote or the MSBA could approve the schematic design very odd situation where the senior administrator had mishandled financial accounts in in the this particular case the school committee realized that there was over two million dollars of overspending and and and he was then terminated at the point the school district was in very very challenging financial straits and put all projects basically everything on hold that they absolutely didn't have to have also really lost a lot of community support for the school committee it was a two district and so there was an awful lot of repair that had to go on because of this financial incident so that's why it didn't proceed and again it didn't fail a vote but it it didn't even make it to the vote because the school committee put it on hold what was the lesson learned um I guess you could say make sure you have good financial accounting um and and oversight but I think that aside from that I I think transparency really having uh good um documentation having ease to the information is really important as much said you know in in our case we have a project budget management system that's online that you can look at at any point in time and it's a hundred percent transparent it goes all the way back to um every invoice and so there there's nothing left to be sort of murky or cloudy it is crystal clear and in um the discussion like Rachel was saying that the documentation that we maintain from committee meetings or community meetings um really having all of that and supported as Christina said on a website where it's really easy to get to and transparent builds trust and um and I think that you you earn trust and you earn support you you don't just ask for it you earn it and so we go through the process of making sure we do that that would probably be the lesson learned from from that Spencer Eastbrook Field experience you have any questions beyond that that I can answer oh thank you um I'm the next question um and you've somewhat been talking about this all the way through but how do you describe your team style in managing a school building project how do you view your role relative designers architects owners and other partners and this is the sort of the final question here I'm going to let um Rachel talk to this one because her role is and and again this team is and Terry pointed it out earlier this team's all worked together so this is a team that's worked together knows how one another um acts and um and does the job and how to rely on you know what are your expectations from your team members and um Rachel's in that um communication role um in coordination role so that and and I'll I'll finish up the end of this question Rachel go ahead all right so um something we always say is we manage projects as if they are our we are part of your team so we want what is best for you our superintendent in Manchester Essex Kamala Bowden said that having us as their OPM is like having an extension of their staff we are collaborative in our process and we do a great job keeping a large committee informed and working efficiently our combination of collaboration and decisive decision making sets us apart from other project managers so we will be the hub throughout this process it is important for us to identify our stakeholders and get to know them by the effective and efficient communication with each stakeholder involved it puts us in a position for a successful vote which leads us to our project approval in Manchester Essex we had community meetings from the start and on a regular basis to include them in the project process and like Christina said before we want to make sure that we are getting the information out so that the community can also be heard so you know that that is you know our key role is is largely in communication and making sure everything is being conveyed back and forth between the team members the owner as well as the community as Christina has pointed out one of the things that I think we bring to the table that I mentioned early on is that our backgrounds in mind specifically from a construction standpoint and our firm's ability to work with the architect side and interact with them as we see items develop or teamwork going on when we see that things aren't necessarily quite right or performing in in the way that we're expecting we know from a position of doing it not managing it but actually doing it where we can we can draw on that experience to say no you're not doing it right or maybe you should be doing it this way because we're looking for something in some other way and and the way we act with the team as actual partners but we're coming from a perspective being able to do it and I think that that gives us credibility and allows us a healthier interaction with team members after all at the end of the day all we're trying to do is get the best that everybody can give us we're trying to bring the best out in every single player and when we do that as a team we are going to be more successful and everybody's happier when everybody's doing a great job it's a happy place to be a part of it you look forward to working with your group and so we try to instill that mentality and that attitude of we're doing this together and we know what we're doing so that's how I think we engage with our other partners on the project. Thank you. Does anyone have any additional follow-up questions? I have just one I think you sort of touched on it but have there been in terms of teammates have there been times where you had opposing views or conflicting beliefs on where you could go that you had to negotiate, mediate, get to yes in any way? I think that that's a common occurrence and when when you say teammates I assume you're you're talking OPM contractor or architect are you saying within my own team? Larger team yes the larger team so interestingly the last job I was on I was working with Shomet and the superintendent and I met at three times a week I'd usually meet him at three o'clock in the afternoon once the site settled down and we would review what is coming up in the in the next week initially he was absolutely opposed to me in mind meddling with his delivery of the job what he found was after about the first month that all I was trying to do was fill the voids where he might be not seeing and and often we would have discussions where I'd say no I'm not doing it that way well why wouldn't you consider doing it this way we'd go back and forth and either he'd back down or I would back down what was important from that exchange was that we were actually trying to build a better mousetrap if you will we were challenging one another in a non confrontational way with both of us trying to do the best we could and I've also had that kind of back and forth with the architect community where we've talked about for example to meet energy code or improve on energy code how do you how do you insulate the exterior wall and on the Mount Greylock job in in Williamstown the architect wanted to do a double exterior wall so a double metal stud wall and insulate it with the vapor barrier in between the two and that cost was over a hundred thousand dollars and and so we went back and forth on that as a discussion point and eventually decided that we would go with a single metal stud wall with mineral wool on clips behind the brick facade brick and metal panel facade anyhow so the exchange I think is very healthy it's how you approach it and how you communicate with your team members not in a critical way but in a in a constructive way did I answer your question yes thank you other questions great well I think we get it in 47 minutes by by my counter here very good on time and on budget yeah dang on schedule I think I'm sure Anthony would love to get a copy of of the presentation as as a PDF or something yeah can you email to me in whatever format you have it that'll be fine yeah it's easy to send that over to you okay well if there's nothing further I'm going to formally close this session and thank you again and and we'll move on thank you okay thank you thank you very much thank you everyone