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After some deliberation, the San Ramon Valley Unified School District Board of Education has decided to not terminate its contract with Vila Construction Company, the primary contractor for the Stone Valley Middle School modernization project, but not without a caveat.
SRVUSD board members remain frustrated at the lack of progress, communication and worsening delays, and have given Superintendent Rick Schmitt the authority to terminate the contract in the future, should staff deem it prudent.
“I’m tired of hearing why it is everyone’s fault but the contractors. I trust staff to make the appropriate decision about whether this contract needs to be terminated or not,” Board Member Greg Marvel said at the meeting. “Absent meaningful change in behavior, I leave it to the superintendent to decide if this contract needs to be terminated.”
After construction began in January 2016, the comprehensive modernization project at the Alamo campus was estimated to be completed by May 2018, but various delays have pushed the project’s completion date back significantly.
Current estimates of completion have pushed the date to April 2019, and district staff have said given the slow rate of work, a summer 2019 or later completion date is not out of the question.
After discussing their concerns over the lack of progress, SRVUSD director of facilities Daniel Hillman stated that Vila had presented “cures” to the problems and have begun to ramp up production. Implemented cures have included increasing staffing on the job site as well as additional resources.
Vila Construction’s vice president Michael Vila attended the meeting and spoke on his company’s behalf. He claimed that the delays were caused by extenuating circumstances and the fault of other contractors.
“There has been some out of sequence work that has greatly affected the schedule…you build a wall and there’s a certain sequence of work that happens before you can finish the wall. The other prime contractors were not coordinating with us, and in short we got into a situation where work went ahead of us which greatly affected our schedule,” Vila said.
Vila further stated that district staff do not understand the problems creating the delays.
“We are hoping the district takes a look at the individual staff on the project because we are not getting the cooperation needed,” he continued. “And quite frankly, it is a little harassing getting termination notices over and over without understanding what the problem is.”
“I’m tired of hearing about the finger pointing,” Marvel responded, before the board unanimously approved delegating termination to Schmitt.
Board member Mark Jewett was unable to attend the meeting, but conferred with his fellow members via phone during their closed session discussions on the matter.
Funded through the Measure D local school facilities bond, the estimated $40.3 million project aims to replace decades-old, single-story classrooms with a new L-shaped, two-story building. The project also features a multipurpose building, a 39,300-square-foot outdoor quad, maintain seven outdoor basketball courts and upgrade the schools sewer and drainage systems.
While the project continues, students are being housed in temporary buildings on the southwest side of the nearly 10-acre school site, with 22 portables being used as classrooms and two others functioning as the short-term library.
The district has a meeting with representatives from Vila scheduled for Wednesday, to discuss the status of the project.
In other business
* SRVUSD staff launched a YouTube test program Tuesday night. If all goes according to plan, anyone will be able to watch school board meetings on the district’s YouTube page, including PowerPoint and relevant agenda item graphics.
* A presentation given by staff indicated that the 2018-19 school year has been a high water mark for overall student enrollment, and multi-year projections indicate the beginning of a slow and steady drop in the overall number of students.
Data collected by the district’s longtime partner Davis Demographics & Planning, Inc. indicates that over the next seven years SRVUSD is projected to see an average decline of 536 students each year. By the 2025-26 school year the district’s population is expected to drop to 28,250, from its current high of 31,999.
“The data is very much real and with that said we don’t want people to believe that there is anything about this data that should force any of us to lose an ounce of sleep, tonight or next month or in the next year or two,” Chief Business Officer Greg Medici said.
Primary factors contributing to what staff say will become a general statewide trend include low birth rates and mobility — families moving away.
These numbers are concerning when considering that districts’ primary funding from Sacramento is based on average daily attendance numbers, but staff say currently available date will enable them to prepare and make efforts to “right size” enrollment numbers.
“I remember people standing at that podium lambasting us because we weren’t building more schools in the Dougherty Valley. Which we had the data, we had the perception that in the long term building more schools we were going to have empty schools. So we got that right,” Marvel said. “This district has always done an excellent job of making sure that we try to be proactive rather than reactive.”
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Marvel said. “This district has always done an excellent job of making sure that we try to be proactive rather than reactive.”
Marvel:
Then how did Ben Curry drown after you were told by PE teacher Mr Matthews in Nov 2017 that someone would drown because of class size. Does not seem very proactive and in this case a student died because of your lack of action.
Who is managing this contractor on the district side? There should be a SRVUSD staff employee who manages this project on-site all day. As any person who’s done construction, knows you have to be on-site to facilitate/mitigate these contractor issues. I bet no one is there on site and just waits for problems, allowing days and weeks go by.
There should be a daily log of what’s accomplished, what needs to happen tomorrow- all visible to tax payers so we can see the progress. Standard project management with outside contractors.
Sounds like they have more than a single contractor. Meaning that to save money they pieced out the job to a couple contractors. Which looks good on the initial financial review. But then the burden to manage the contractors is on SRVUSD. They need to be keeping all contractors in sync with each other as the job completes construction stages. SRVUSD should have set the job up to have a single contractor who manages the sub contractors and is responsible for the entire job. As a home owner doing a remodel I have a choice do I manage the electrical, building, and plumbing contractors or do I hire a general contractor who manages all three.
SRVUSD needs to hire a professional construction project manager. Stop blaming the largest contractor for the problems. After you fire this contractor who is the next target to blame for your lack of project management?
Multi prime contracts never work. Districts and Construction Managers do not know sequences or how to build. On multi primes the largest contract usually take the lead like General Contractor would. Ask Gilbane how their multi primes are going at West Valley Community College…..not good…..at all.