 And we are recording and we are live. Good morning. Welcome to this first interview of the morning. I am Jonathan Salva and I'm chair chair of the OPM subcommittee. I guess I would ask my committee members to introduce themselves and then ask our candidates group to introduce themselves. So I'll start Jonathan I'm Kathy Shane and I'm chair of the full building committee and I'm also a town council member. And I'm Steve Schreiber I'm vice chair of the elementary school building committee and my day job is I'm chair of architecture at UMass, which is how I know some of you. Anthony Delaney procurement officer for the town and member of the committee. I think you're the out of school time. Sorry, did you hear me? That was fast. Can you say it again? Yeah, I'm sorry. Dwayne Chambl. I'm the out of school time coordinator for the district of Amherst. Excellent. Good. Well, thank you, Margaret. If you want to book slide deck and we will introduce ourselves as the slide deck starts. Give me Margaret a chance to pull it up. I want to thank you for inviting us to this to be part of this process. What we're going to do is we're going to talk a little bit about the company. We'll introduce ourselves. We'll talk some talk about some of the specifics of your firm, actually have your project and then we'll be able to we'll answer some of your questions. We are a national program and project management firm focused on capital projects. Solutions for our clients. We have four hundred employees nationwide. We are focused. We do K through 12 schools across the country. Locally, we have been a business for 22 years. We're founded as pinking company. We have 28 staff members in the Boston office and we have extensive experience with K through 12 schools. A little bit about the makeup of our firm. Nationally three out of four and five out of the first eight legacy firms were M or WB firms. We know we understand the importance of diversity. 50% of the principles of the firm are. Minority or women. And locally, we are founded as a WB and 75% of our senior leadership is women. So, I'm going to start. And we're going to do introductions. We're going to talk a little bit about the organization of the team as it relates to the town and the district. We're going to talk about some of the challenges that we have and then kind of wrap up our presentation and then we have some slides to address some of the questions to us, but we'll sort of take a pause at that moment. Periodically, I'm going to take the slides down so that we can really be people not slides, but just to get started. So I'm Margaret Wood. I was trained as an architect, but I have been working as an owner's project manager for this firm for 17 years. I have been the lead on all of our core projects. And we've had, you know, multiple successful projects. My role here is really in the feasibility and schematic design process. That means that I'm going to be your partner in the designer selection process, your partner in the development with the design team of the options. And I will be responsible for developing the MSBA project budget, which is inclusive of all the hard and soft costs for the project, as well as working with you and the MSBA to determine the reimbursement rate. And probably most importantly for, given your concerns, I will be the lead on the community engagement piece. Bob, you're muted Bob. Actually, why don't we, well Bob's doing that Mary, why don't you go back to Bob. Okay. Hi, I'm Mary Bolso I've been in the business over 30 years I will be guiding you through the construction administration which starts the bidding process and go through close out that includes includes making sure you're safely moved into your building and coming back after 11 months to make sure everything's still functioning properly while you're still under warranty. Yep. Okay. Good. Thank you got that fixed. My name is Bob Stevens I'm an architect with almost 40 years of experience, mainly with one Western mass firm through 2018 and over that period of time it functioned as a project architect or project principle on a number of public school projects, including elementary schools middle schools and high schools, both new and renovation addition projects. Some of those renovations included occupied buildings with a complicated additions and complex stasing requirements so I have familiarity there. I have experience with both the MSBA and many years prior to that the SPAB is as they used to be called and, of course the process has gotten much more complicated in terms and more rigorous but some of the things haven't changed. A few elementary schools I recall include Grafton elementary school. That I was the architect for the Stony Hill Elementary School in Wilberham I worked on a K through 12 facility and Sheffield mass, and also an elementary school in Palmer. And I'll be involved throughout the process to provide continuity and also be involved in the design review process. Good. I'm Tom O'Neill, managing director of the Northeast region. My background is construction and I have extensive experience with across all markets but it's a lot of educational experience. I'll be helping with the contracts I'll be helping with public procurement logistics and phasing for this project. Kelly, you're muted too. Hi, I'm Shelley Podorf. I'm happy to be here. I am an architect, a practicing architect, been in practice for 25 years. I'm also certified passive house consultant and lead AP. So my practice really focuses on high performance net zero energy regenerative design, really trying to push the boundaries on that. And that includes experiences of the architect on five K through eight schools, two of which were lead certified one at the gold level. And then two buildings which were designed for living building challenge one of which is complete and has just gotten its living building challenge pedal certification that's a net zero building which I can show you a little bit later. In addition to that I'm also a professor so I teach at Middlebury College where I'm hoping to get the next generation on board and to be able to take the torch with this as well. In that capacity, I'm a passive house Institute US trainer CPHC trainer at the university level. And if you're not familiar with passive house that's in essence, particularly the way fias runs it it's trying to get to the most affordable way to get to net zero at in a very rigorous process. So I bring that to the table and I will be doing the net zero peer review on this project. So, Jonathan Abbey, who is on our team was not able to join us at the last minute, but I, we have worked with Jonathan before we included him on our team because I think one of the things that we think we have seen in the past is that communities sometimes get focused on net zero, but aren't necessarily focused on where the renewables are I mean the net zero building is not a zero energy building. It is really a commitment to have minimal energy use and then to use renewables to supply that need. So Jonathan, who has done worked in a sort of wide variety of energy sectors is very experienced in sort of getting the best deal for communities on solar in particular. So he's not I think he's not going to be able to join us this morning but he is sort of a I would say an ancillary part of the team, if that is something that is helpful to the town of the district. And then Pete Timothy is also not with us but is our long time estimating partner. We use Pete on all of our schools because 100% of what he does is public construction estimating in Massachusetts. And that means that he always has his finger exactly on the pulse of what the costs are. And you know in a moment. I very much hope that this project will not be bid and the current environment which is very volatile. The right word to use. You do not want to be bidding a project right now because billing costs are all over the place but that's Pete's area of expertise. So, just to talk a little bit revisit and talk a little bit more about the overall team organization so you know I think it's always really interesting to me about public school projects is that they're essentially a partnership between a town and a district, you know in this case you're actually part of a regional district as we as we discussed earlier. And, and each of those group you both the town side and the, and the district side have their constituencies. Sometimes they overlap sometimes they're independent. You have a partnership, we have a partnership. So this is really just to illustrate that that parallel structure. Mary, myself, Bob and Mary will are the sort of partnership for the opm team. Obviously there will be an architect in the mix here I didn't even try to diagram that and a contractor, but Shelley Pete and Timothy are are kind of assists in the various areas of their expertise. So, a couple moments to talk about six of your project goals. So, right sizing enrollment is obviously a key issue, you have, you, you had a project with 725 students that you were trying to sort of make a fabulous new home for. I'm trying that 600 from what I understand that is likely to be tied up with the regional school agreement and some changes that might be made to where the sixth grade is actually want to have Mary talk a little bit about that we have experience in regional school districts, but Mary is actually very involved in her own community of negotiating regional school district agreement Mary, you want to say a couple words about that. So I've spent the last two years. We, we redid our regional agreement, we actually worked with the, the two towns, and redistributed the way the students are allocated to different buildings to make it more fair and equitable to the students we have a small town and large town marriage, and the smaller town. We travel at elementary schools what was happening was one would have 10 kids in a 10 students in a class and the other one would have 30. So by re regionalizing the whole system instead of just the high school now the class sizes are about 20 all the way across the board which is much more beneficial to us. We tried us going to desi to get it approved. We had to have a time meeting vote both towns had to vote. It was very successful we did it very open, a lot of public meetings, a lot of reach out. And now that has spun off into we are collaboratively working to go for a statement of interest for a new high school for the district. So, I second thing that's, I think very, very high on your goals is creating a warm child centered building. You know it's obvious there's a lot of anxiety provoked by the notion of taking to, you know quite small school communities and putting them together. And, and I don't want to disguise that this is fundamentally the job of the architect. And we will assist with this but I think getting this to me there's two pieces one is getting the right design partner. And I think the second is really looking at precedence that people can relate to so that the community sees what this could be. I think is is really going to be central to people kind of not just voting for the project but really embracing it. And it travels into this issue of ensuring public support. So, you know, failed vote, you know, what a miserable situation after all the investment, but I think a couple of things, as I've sort of been watching this from a distance that keep bubbling up that are really likely to be at the core of what you say about this project that people seem to be widely understood as one that the need for an improved learning environment to get rid of the open plan buildings is really the nugget that the project that you're proposing which is not necessarily but likely to be a sort of combined facility brings with it a lot of it's a very fiscally responsible proposal both in terms of the first cost, as well as the operational cost not just the building operational cost but the administrative costs so I think that fiscal responsibility is something with which I do think people understand but is should be at the heart of this discussion. And I also think that the proposal you're talking about has a lot of legs in terms of equity diversity and inclusion. So, I think all of those you, because of the conversations you've had you've kind of set the table for those being at the heart of that process. So, Bob, you want to talk a little bit about the actually Shelly to chime into about the high performance building piece. Yep. Well, obviously we know you, you, your goals deliver net zero project and the market has introduced two professionals that will be providing expertise to achieve that. I think achieving it will require a lot of follow through. I think the ideas thrown out the schematic level that need to be properly budgeted for but it'll take focus to ensure that those goals established at the schematic design phase are later properly implemented as as feasible. And again, we certainly appreciate the help that Shelly will be be providing along the way. I should also point out that even though net zero. Mr. passes lead requirements MSBA will still be looking for either lead certification or mass chip certification in order for the town to get to additional reimbursement points, which is important. Mary, how about chiming in on the occupied site. Okay, so it's not unusual to have occupied sites when we're building schools have done this multiple times. My biggest thing is the safety. Putting together a complete logistics plan with the contractor and the architect and the owner before the shovels hit the ground, laying out where the bus is going to line up where's pickup drop off parent pickup parent drop off because we all know it's not going to place the bus anymore. And then I always invite the public safety team to come and review the site, how we're going to lay it out how we're going to set it up because if there is an emergency they need to know that the doors have changed or the entrance has changed and how is flow going to move to keep everybody on the same page and everybody safe. And typically what I do is, you know, again back to communication making sure everybody knows where because in these days it's not just the parents, it's the grandparents it's everybody that's coming to that site there are a lot of people that you have to watch out for back to you for budget. Sure yeah, I think we can all agree on the importance of meeting budget schedule and part of our focus is to help establish and maintain a budget and execute the other project on time. And I think each each these works hands in hand in terms of a controlling costs. While construction schedules are often dictated by this occupancy of the school. You need to also really focus on the schedule for the design process and making sure there's adequate time during a design process to properly estimate and to allow the town to make the proper decisions associated with costs. There's a lot of involved and fast track projects where foundations are going in before the budget is really nailed down and it leads to problems. And when the budget is established it should be realistic and it should incorporate a reasonable contingency for unforeseen things that arise during during the process. We're going to start at our 15 minutes so I'm just going to wrap up and say, kind of repeat some things that hopefully you already see about our team. We are bringing a very experienced team to this we are, we are seniors in terms of our experience and you know we think that that's beneficial to this project. We're really good at making public presentations we're going to talk about that some more during the Q&A period. Actually, all of us have done logistically challenging projects on sites that are occupied by kids. We have a team that is net zero Cape can make a net zero capable building, but it can also help you make sure that you can bring the renewables to the project. I'm a very diverse team. I think it's hard to imagine that we are not the most diverse team that you're going to see today. And, you know, again, as I said in my intro, we're really committed to public schools we really understand that they're the commons of public education, and that's why we all do this work. So that's our formal that ends our formal presentation. We do have some slides to address your questions whoever you want to answer that, manage that. I think we can. I shouldn't speak for the chair here. Should we start. No, I was muted. Thank you very much that that was a great presentation. We'll start our questions I know Anthony's got the first one so I will end it off to Anthony to ask the first question. Okay, can you describe one particularly challenging elementary school project for which you served as OPM, and maybe some of the lessons learned there. Sure. So, we've actually worked as individuals and together on a wide variety of elementary schools. I won't go into the details here but this is kind of a sampling of them. And we spent a fair amount of time talking about whether any of them were a good fit with this question in terms of challenges. And actually to be honest, most of these elementary schools had did not have the challenges that you have. We think that the key challenge that you have is actually the occupied site. So with apologies for not answering the question exactly as you asked it. I want to talk a little bit about our Clark Avenue middle school project so not an elementary school, but it was a project you can sort of see here in these slides where there was an existing building. It's in an urban environment so you know not Amherst, but it had a limited footprint. And the building was in horrible shape. This part of the building was actually not occupied because of the condition. And what we did in close partnership with the design team and with the construction manager is we developed a phasing plan, which knocked down this part of the building first so that this you can see in the second slide. There was the operational part of the building stayed intact. And then we built the new taller classroom building on the site. The distance and you can kind of see it here between the new building construction and the operational building was that like 1015 feet max. I will tell you one of the challenges was not distracting the kids who are in those classrooms with the construction that was happening right outside their window, but oops, hang on a second. So we, we finished that. And then we took down the next piece of the building that wasn't needed. Then the whole building, then we built the new gym and administrative, the new public entrance, and the, and the gym and facility so I mean I think this is, you know, to me, this is the nugget like you. You want to build a building on an occupied site and how you do that and having people who have experience with this with, you know, I think you're going to have to create a new entrance for construction vehicles you're going to need to move your building to do all of these pieces. You have the advantage that you've already looked at some of these and the previous project so it's not entirely like inventing the wheel, but having a team that has this experience and has done this before I think is really important. And on the side here is a picture of an elementary school that we did as phase construction and you can see there were lots of different phases, the building was kept occupied the same the whole time. You know, moving kids around within the school, but I don't really think you're talking about renovating a building here. Well, I suspect it's one of the options we will, we will look at as part of the study process but agreed. Margaret, if I could just add one comment one of the important things that I've learned over the years with these occupied renovations or building on the same site next to an adjacent school is working with the administration for testing when the MCAS come up construction stops for that week. Yeah. And you're obviously maximizing in both cases here, you're maximizing the summers, you're planning the schedule around the big chunk that you can bite off and do that is the most dangerous or problematic whether it's abatement demolition, both of these projects. And so we used the summers and school vacations as very intensive work periods, and had a fair amount of weekend construction. And to sort of grease the wheels and make sure that things that were like, you know, utility moving utilities over from one location to another, you know was not disrupting the operations of the school. I'm not going to cut you off but I just want to make sure before we ask the next question that that you feel like you've had the opportunity to answer. Yeah, that's, that's the nugget. I am going to do the next question, and which is describe your experience with net zero energy capable schools or other net zero projects. And please also discuss the cost consideration and how these are managed. I'm going to share this over to Shelly, I will tell you that we are working on a couple of current projects but they're not finished Shelly is really, she's our guru here so Shelly. Thank you. So, we have a couple slides here and I just want to walk through basically what the process is and I'll get it answering your questions as this goes but typical net zero design process is here at the top these four steps. First you optimize the building shape and orientation, then the building envelope, then the systems, and only after you've done all those things do you add the renewable system. So that's the general process very, you know it's simple to understand what gets complicated as well figuring out what's the most affordable way to get there where because there are multiple options right. So that's part two here getting to that affordable option. In this particular process. The first thing so to get the building shape and orientation right you would do a shoebox energy model. I would recommend that that be done when you're looking at the three different options whether it's renovation part renovation or new construction. And the reason that I say that is because I think after you've chosen your preferred building, it's going to be difficult to change that too much after the fact. So I think that sort of work needs to be done as you're considering those three options and that will also give you some energy feedback and cost estimating on those as well. So once you get to the preferred option. Here's where really you get into it, you, you've got your preferred option and you want to model three different levels of performance. So a code based building, a high performance building at the other end and then something in the middle. It's easy to say that but there needs to be some expertise in determining what how to meet those three levels of performance because there's options within all of those. So that's where I'll be helping out and hopefully we will have selected a design team that has experience as well and, and we can have a good conversation about dialing and what actually to model. I mean, you're modeling, you're modeling those options and cost estimating those options and really honestly in this case because it's already been determined that you're going to be net zero. The cheapest first cost wins operational cost is is out of the picture because in all three cases, it's going to be net zero so you really are looking for what's the cheapest mix between building envelope systems and your renewable system. And it changes daily. You know it's changing because the prices solar panels are changing. Obviously construction costs are crazy right now. So you won't know we simply won't know which of those three options is going to be the cheapest until we're at the moment of modeling them and then cost estimating them but that's the general way to go about it. There is one caveat here that it came up on a previous slide that I do want to mention, which is that we haven't when you get to net zero energy. That's operational energy so we haven't talked about embodied energy. And what we're finding in the field more and more is that that embodied energy is actually really high. When we're looking at time frames within which we need to make the shifts that we need to make. So if the goal of being that zero, which I presume it is, is to provide a viable future for us. So we're kind of shifting. We're not just kind of but we've found that we're, we can oftentimes just be shifting carbon and operational energy into carbon and to the point costs and that comes in the form of the structure and mostly insulation and having insulation. The good news is that we have, we're very good at modeling embodied energy now. The design team should be able to do it within Revit and do that analysis alongside of the energy modeling. So there's a lot of variations out there that will store carbon, rather than have a very, very high carbon footprint. So I think, you know, the only caveat to this lowest cost wins is also to at least consider what the embodied carbon is in those various options. So, and then next slide, Margaret. So my role in all of this is first of all to assist the, you know, selecting a design team that has these expertise that I'm talking about. That will make the process easier and then I can, I will be there to help guide that along as well as just provide peer review. I'm going to spend a little time on the second one, which is assisting envisioning the educational opportunities of net zero buildings, and I already talked about the carbon reduction goals. But I want to bring your attention to this photo on the right this is the Living Building Challenge Studio at the Monarch school. This campus actually is a three fairly large educational building in itself. It's a private school for kids with neurological differences. All the entire campus is the gold and every all three building the other main three academic buildings are lead gold. They wanted to push the border more and provide this classroom studio that we go for living building challenge. So, this process actually started with a very intense community engagement stakeholder engagement, integrative design and the way that Margaret's talking about, which went all the way through conceptual design, and it's designed to be a lab for the students. So, the other thing that I just want to point out is that if the reason we're pursuing that zero is to provide a viable future, particularly for our kids. We also have to understand that our kids are going to have to be the stewards of that future. They're going to have to be a lot smarter than we are to be honest. It's not too soon to start, start that process in elementary school and there's plenty of examples of this. There's living building challenge projects and others where the building itself is is a project based learning tool. In this particular case this building is designed for both passive cooling as well as active conditioning and the active system is a geothermal system with a ventilation system and then it's got a five kilowatt array on the roof. The students are responsible for monitoring that system they're responsible for knowing when it should be an active mode versus when it should be in passive mode. They can track like how is the array performing relatively different weather conditions. There's even a meter where the geothermal lines come into the building that tells them what the temperature of the water is when it's going down into the ground and then it comes back. So there's there's all sorts of opportunities built into this building so that the students can use it as a project. And I'm pointing this out because that really, if that we don't pursue that on this project it would be a missed opportunity and that has to start at the community engagement process. That's something I'll be assisting with. Then from there it's really getting into the nuts and bolts so figuring out what those three options are that will be modeling and cost estimating, and then peer review during the construction documents I've often served in the role of redlining other text wall sections section details and etc to make sure that the building is going to perform as as intended, and then also help with making sure that the commissioning agent is considering and looking and checking everything that needs to be checked to make sure that this performs at net zero. I just want to add, because we always feel very constrained by the MSBA format the 20 page limit on our proposal. We didn't have a chance to talk very much about building commissioning. But it's so important. I mean, it is a net zero process also depends on quality commissioning. In this case, and some of you probably already know, but I'll repeat that the MSBA, one of the real perks if you will have the MSBA process often doesn't feel like they give you anything, they give you a commissioning agent. It is an assigned commissioning agent you don't get to pick them, but we were involved actually in developing the commissioning program as consultants to the MSBA and we're very familiar with the consultants they use their they're very good. They don't get assigned until after you've signed your funding agreement. So, you know, part of what's going on here is kind of thinking bringing the commissioning agent thinking about how you design the envelope into this process by having Shelly on the team and of course whoever the design team brings. And then you know it's it's just a very, as we've discussed a very integrated design process after that. And that's it for our response to that question. And I have to admit I have forgotten which was which of us is asking question number three but I'm sure that personal chime in. Yeah, I'm number three. Thank you. This is a two part question. What techniques or activities have you used to engage the broader community. What strategies have you used to help communities reach the final approval and while describing can you use specific examples of any challenges, successes or failures. Yes. So I'm going to talk about this I'm probably talk too much already but this is my zone so with the assistance of my great team members. So I want to say, as I mentioned earlier, I mean, in doing the listening sessions that you've already conducted, you've done some great work. I mean these sort of key issues that have evolved as the things that what people can agree upon which is the, we need a better learning environment for staff students and families. So I think it's a muscly responsible approach. A green school is something that sort of brought new to the project to this project since the last project but it is something that it seems like everybody can get together around. And also this ability of the project to sort of unify the town and address special ed diversity and inclusion. And that can be the foundational issues. Some of the concerns that you've heard and you know I would expect to hear in the situation or you know what does it mean if you do consolidate schools will people lose their jobs, will there be a budget for a single school that's then getting sort of, you know, a day through the budget process. How can a 600 students school feel small. What happens if the enrollment goes up because guess what it does a lot, you know communities build these schools and all of a sudden people who were another who were going out of district or to a charter school or like coming back. What will transportation look like, and will people leave the district if the school communities are joined together. I mean, I will tell you that's the least of my concerns because I think it's more likely you're going to see an enrollment increase, but you've heard that and I see that in the in the conversations you've had as a concern. So, you know, again, the first slide is about, you know, what people can agree about and the second slide is about what you need to know our anxiety points. So how do you, what are the strategies to aim to your question so I mean the one that has to be at the top of the list is about being inclusive. Right. You need to make sure that all the colors and languages of the school community are represented and addressed. We didn't officially put her on the team but we've worked with a woman named Josiane Hernandez who has a firm called Archipelago strategies. We've worked with her on the build BPS master plan project. We've also done projects now in Chelsea, in Holyoke in Lawrence I mean we have worked very closely with communities if they had the expertise in the community. We used it if the arch as a design team had the expertise we used it if we needed additional expertise and language skills we brought them up. So, you have to do that that's absolutely critical. In terms of successful and tech activities and techniques, having a brand, you know, yes on to yellow lawn signs, yellow, you know, wristbands, you know something that people can like have a sticker have a button like I think being able to find your supporters and help them develop a brand so that people start to recognize this. I mean, you probably did this in your previous project but I will tell you it's one of the most successful techniques that we've ever seen used or helped to develop. So, establishing a core group of community supporters. I mean, you'll have a big team, but that team basically has to convey a core narrative and message out to supporters who then are spreading the message further who are those people. How can you help them answer questions. Facebook, Mary maybe you want to talk about how Facebook's been used in your community. It's been a lot of, especially with the pandemic and not being able to have large community meetings we've done a lot of Facebook lives, where the residents and the stakeholders can type questions into the chat. The moderator receives the questions and ask the panels, the panelists the questions. And then we're able to save that loaded to our local website loaded to our local cable channel to hit all the masses not everybody is on Facebook. It's been very successful. Strategies to reach final approval approval. It's, it's kind of a short message you want to be very concrete. You wanted to have a tax calculator and we can help you develop a tax calculator which is where you can go to a certain location on the town's website or the district's website. Put in your, your housing assessment your how your home assessment, and it'll tell you, you know what your cost is going to be. What not to do. Don't change the message late in the game. I've worked in a community where this happened where they kind of got anxious that the late in the game and said like, Oh, well we found some more money and it was just a disaster I mean you just can't. You have to like figure out when your narrative is early and stick with it. We do have what we call a community engagement toolbox which is really built around the develop these develop and inform pieces, you know figuring out what the most important information is, and then figuring out how you're going to do the informing so this is a bit of a recapitulation of what you've heard before but you know for sure we know, and you know we mentioned in our proposal that people on Amherst really like to discuss the age is the only thing that is silent, and honestly, we love that we'd much rather engage than not. We do not shy away from that so Dwayne I hope that answers your question. And Margaret I'll just add a couple of specific examples and I think, as Margaret said, this is her zone, and it worked not just in elementary education projects but also in our housing projects and a lot of our other projects. Absolutely engaged, but I'll give a couple of specific examples in the Norton High School project was up against, they would be required to renovate the building, they chose to renovate addition. They needed that exclusion, it was the first, it would have been it will going to be the first exclusion they had ever done as a town. They were incredibly nervous about it. Every imaginable group possible rotary clubs with with the with the architects by the way it's it's a team effort, the team effort, yes, and and they vote past 72% favorable. So it was something that they were nervous about they prepared for and we were very much engaged. And they'll give you a very recent example with city of Lawrence, city of Lawrence has a tool projects in process right now. The one's extremely difficult. And that's the one we're working on and the other one is, is a little little bit more straightforward with school project. We, the project got to the point where it passed the finance committee vote, but that was struggling to pass the city council they able to vote. At that point in time, our project director was just all hands on deck talking to everybody in the city who had supported the project component program is as a lot of you know, Mayor Rivera, left to go on mass development. So he, he had been guiding the project all the way through so we just we reached out we engaged everybody was a stakeholder. Everybody wanted this project to happen, and they passed its vote last two days. So, specific examples. I can add a little bit to just building on on the frequently asked questions suggestion there. You have to try to envision all the, all the tough questions you're going to get like, you know what happens if the project is over budget and how do we know this design solution meets your educational needs. How do we know this is the best option and one other options have been explored you need to be prepared to really defend the solution of the preferred solution that you're trying to sell seems kind of basic but I just experienced lots of questions along those lines. I get the next question which is, have you or your firm ever been terminated from a project or had one ending without proceeding. If yes, discuss any lessons or insights gained from this experience. So, I am going to talk about our project in Holyoke. Because it has some similar obvious similarities to you so this was a project that really started with an equity discussion in Holyoke they really have kind of no middle school space that's a suitable at all. But they have 1100 middle school kids so the building committee with the participation of the receiver and the mayor at the time I think you probably all know Alex is left now were really committed to solving the problem for all 1100 kids. That was a big thing to bite off for a community that has, you know, very sort of low income level. So what was proposed was to more or less identical they were kind of kid apart schools on two different sites. It did not pass, mostly because of money. But I think it's, it's very like what's going on in Amherst it was the beginning of the discussion not the end of discussion. They're back in the pipeline now for a single building. It was the two buildings with the hopes that eventually some years in the future, they will be able to build the second building because people liked the buildings. They agreed with the notion of the middle school. I mean, there were, you know, like Amherst. I think it was the beginning of discussion that the conversation involves I, I do not believe if you look at the history of failed votes, that there are any situations where the failed vote was the end of the conversation. It was the, it was a step in the process and I think you that you are in that place too. I think it's, you know, point being, you don't want to repudiate what's happened before you sort of want to say it's a continuous conversation. I think you have our last one. I'm the last one. And you've already been talking a little bit about this but would you describe your team style in managing the school building project on how do you view your roles and relationships to designers, architects, owners and other partners. So I'm going to turn this over to Bob and Mary, who will be doing the most of the managing of the partners. But I will say, you know, I think there's what we want to just say to begin with is there's the sort of how the MSBA structures it which is great. And then there's the reality of all the different perspectives. So Bob and Mary, why don't you take this one on. I think our style focuses on understanding roles and getting the best performance out of everyone on the team and I think that requires strong building strong relationships and and working cooperatively with all the team participants to achieve the owners goals. And during the integrated design approach where you have all the players on board early in the process, you have an opportunity to leverage everybody's talents, and including possibly the construction manager if CM at risk is the approach that you take. You have everybody there in the room and it just it really relies on cooperation between all the, all the participants, and disharmony amongst the participants, participants does not does not help the cause so you have a number of possible barriers or encounters or problems that may pop up all jobs have a certain percentage of those so working cooperatively is really important. I think it's our job to manage but it's not our job to, to make other or intentionally make other people look bad I think again the spirit of cooperation is, is, is our goal. So I'll add to that yeah I agree, it is a team effort, we all do have to work cooperatively one of the things that I like to do when I first start a project is construction one on one, basically orientate the client meet with the building committee and explain the roles put together an Excel chart but has that outlines the task of who's responsible for what. What does the opm do what does the architect do what is the owner responsible for what is the contractor responsible for to eliminate duplication of tasks and make sure that nothing falls through the cracks, for example, National Grid. They're always the hardest one to get to site takes a long time. So the process do you know the architects consultant fills out the load sheet the owner needs to sign any easements it's a, there's multiple people that need to know where they, where their job responsibility is, even though you're a volunteer committee, we all have a role that we play so I find using that chart is extremely helpful to everybody that's in chronological order helps us get through, you know, our roles defined that yeah the architect designs the building but the opium works with them to make sure that the it's constructible. And then the CM at risk looks at it from their standpoint, and maybe some value engineering as a group we work together as a team, constant communication constantly working together. So that's that's the way I approach it. And that in here as well like is, is when I do peer review for architects whether I was hired by the architect or by the owner. Having being an architect myself and knowing how complex that process is. It's easy to, you know, become critical. Why didn't you figure why didn't you do this why did you miss out or whatever the case may be and having, you know, been on the other side of that. I think most of my career and still the way I approach it is I when I in that peer review role I'm part of their team. That's the way I think about it, I'm on their team, as if I were working for them, not as some outsider who is there to pinpoint everything that you know they might have missed because it's so complex and there's so many people involved. I just think the, when you have this outside review it just helps. And it's true. It doesn't matter how experienced architect is, or how experienced the team is having that peer review helps in every single, every single instance if it's there. So that's, that's the way that I approach it. Yeah, Shelley's correct I have had an experience where early on one professional from a building committee was keeping score of the architect. You know, nobody has a crystal ball. So it got to the point where I took that gentleman and the architect over to Dunkin Donuts for coffee and discuss the. And that went away. Well done Mary. So that wraps up for that question. Yeah, I just want to ask one follow up your. Many of you are based in Boston and I think Shelley said Vermont. So some of what you've described is hands on like you're physically there. It's so in the way your, your time is allocated will you be able to be here in Amherst when you need to be for those for those roles you've just described. So we should talk a little bit about where we're all from. So I, I am, I am from Boston, although my husband and I have home in the hill towns. So, we're out there a lot, but Bob is from Westfield. Mary is from Worcester. Shelly is the furthest away. I don't know. I'm so I'm in Sudbury, near 20 minutes south of Middlebury. So I don't care. I also am from Texas. So my Texas standards are not that far away. Myself, I'm always on site on the road. You know, I always joke everything's within an hour, whether it is or not. And, you know, I spent after having four children I drove back and forth to USA and hers to get my degree. So it's not that far. And I actually, I just want to say, although my daughter is not thrilled about it, our youngest daughter just accepted. You miss Amherst. So I'm going to expect to be faring a lot of dirty laundry back and forth to Boston, no matter what. Thank you. Thank you very much. Great, but that I believe concludes our list of questions. Any parting thoughts. I just want to say thank you for the opportunity. We look forward to it. We, we enjoy the process. This is, it's your, you're an informed committee, which is always is good for us because I think we can. We're not, we're not informing about the MSBA process for not informing about the this process you understand it so we can get into the details like we did. Thank you. Thank you. And I think that just a point of process do I have, since this is a public meeting, do I have to officially close it as well. Yeah, I think, I think we should adjourn. This is a special meeting so there's no public comment at a special meeting and cleared that with the clerk. So, and then we'll see each other at 10. Anthony, can I just ask will we have a copy of these slides we've just seen. Oh, good question. If you could email those to me. I will. I'm going to send you the PDF as soon as we sign off. Okay. Yeah. And the recording of this meeting will be uploaded to the town's YouTube channel in time, whenever, whenever it gets around to that. Because I, because we could talk about that. Okay. Okay. So I will formally adjourn this meeting. Thank you very much. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Good luck. Thank you.