The decision to renovate or replace a school building is a huge financial consideration for any town, city, or school district. Initiating specific planning steps early on that make the most of available resources can set a project up for success.
As the former Chief Operating Officer, Acting Superintendent of Framingham Public Schools, and the Co-Chair of the Framingham School Building Committee, Capital Strategic Solutions’ Senior Project Manager, Ed Gotgart, understands the pressures of this decision. His expertise in this undertaking can see a project from pre-feasibility to completion and he knows how to avoid the pitfalls.
Here are Ed’s top tips when considering these types of projects:
- When building a pre-feasibility study, working with the guidelines of the Massachusetts State Building Authority (MSBA) can give the project a leg up, as most projects will require state funding through the MSBA. Building your long-term planning around their recommendations makes other processes down the road easier to fund and implement.
- A necessary first step in this process is to have an existing building inventory. This will help in justifying the need for a new or renovated school. This inventory could be managed by several different bodies involved in the school, as the district has the duty of “care and control,”, but the municipality owns the building and would be asked to partially fund the project.
- Reasonable alternatives should be thoroughly identified and considered. When undertaking a school renovation or replacement, the district will be asked why alternatives will not meet the educational needs of the district. Getting ahead of these questions and documenting a thorough review of alternatives makes the need for a new or renovated school more pronounced and shows due diligence in preparation.
- It is then possible to create an estimate of the total costs for a project using the standard or current costs of school construction with the projected enrollment in the school. This estimate is essential for any project to move forward in either the MSBA process or a municipalities’ funding planning.
- Community-based advocacy for the project and its funding process can be a critical part of securing funding for a renovated or new school building. Communicating in a way that is clear, transparent, and easy to understand generates buy-in from the community.
It’s incredibly important to focus on the early stage of the project since I believe that many projects fail due to not having the compelling reasons to engage in a significant renovation or replacement of a school. As a result, many school districts continue to struggle with substandard buildings because they could not make the case that was needed to move a project forward. Furthermore, the costs for this failure are not only educational, but also financial since construction costs only go up if a needed project is deferred.
Where CSS Can Help…
Capital Strategic Solutions has a team with decades of experience in project management, school administration, outreach and engagement, and finance and grant management to support any community considering this undertaking. Ed’s experience in building a pre-feasibility study to assess the inventory, alternatives, and cost estimates to build a proposal uses data driven planning and transparent outreach to build project buy-in.
For more information about how CSS can assist your project, email us at info@capital-strategic-solutions.com.