Formal Response to the AISD Facilities Master Plan Report by Friends of Barton Hills Elementary

8/7/2019 Formal Response to the AISD Facilities Master Plan Report by Friends of Barton Hills Elementary

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- 1 !of 6

Chris Cobb, AIA

Chris Cobb : Off ice of Architecture PLLC610 Brazos St. #202

Austin, Texas 78701

RE: The AISD FCI methodology & the Facilities condition assessment for Barton Hills Elem.

Dear Kelly Tagle, BHEPTA Executive Board, et al.:

At the request of several parents, I spent some time digging into 2 documents that have been preparedfor Austin Independent School District by independent consultants and AISD facilitys staff to aid the districtwith the development of a 10-Year Facilities Master Plan. The first document is not dated and titled, WhitePaper: Facility Condition Index (FCI) at Austin ISD and represents a summary of the methodology used toarrive at the FCI of the various campuses and facilities owned and operated by the district. The seconddocument (also not dated) is titled, Facilities Conditions and Educational Adequacy Assessment, Barton HillsElementary School Assessment. It illustrates the specific alleged deficiencies of the facilities at Barton HillsElementary School and the associated costs to repair those deficiencies. This information is required in orderto arrive at an accurate and useful FCI. I would like to share with you some general thoughts regarding thosedocuments that you might find useful as we strive for a better understanding of the districts approach andposition, and as we try to refine and educate the district on not just the quality of the education at Barton HillsElementary, but also the overall quality of the facility and campus that, in my opinion, has not been accurately

reflected in the FCI report for our campus.I just wanted to briefly remind you of my background as I think it is important to consider the perspective

from which I look at this information. As many in the community know, I was fortunate enough to attendBarton Hills Elementary School myself in the 1970s and was a part of the desegregation effort, and thereforealso had the benefit of attending Ortega Elementary School in East Austin. I feel a deep connection to theseschools and consider it a unique honor to have my own 2 sons attending the Barton Hills as second-generation students. Like it was for me, I believe Barton Hills Elementary will be a strong educationalfoundation for them and cant imagine it not being a choice for our children.

On a professional note, I am looking at this information through the eyes of a licensed architect with 18years of professional experience. Eight of those years were spend with a highly reputable architecture firm inAustin that specializes in school design. More specifically, I was the project architect for elementary schooldesign at this firm. My work there included full-service design for small elementary schools from 20,000 SFwith $2.5 million budgets to larger campuses of up to 105,000 SF with $14 million budgets. The design workincluded extensive services for Austin ISD, Dripping Springs ISD, Llano ISD, Lake Travis ISD, Eanes ISD,and Leander ISD on a variety of projects, both large and small. Since starting my own practice in 2006, mywork has taken a different direction, but the design work I performed on schools has definitely shaped myperspective on architecture as a whole, and has provided me with valuable insight on the FCI reports thatwere prepared for AISD.

In brief, I will summarize and point your attention to a few key thoughts:

FCIs are not intended for use in comparing the conditions across multiple facilities. They aredesigned to give a measurement of the physical condition of a facility, or a group of facilities (asa whole), so that facilities managers can determine an adequate reinvestment rate to preventthe accumulation of deferred maintenance for that facility.

The approach of AISD facilities staff is to use the FCI to determine when the replacement of afacility might be warranted. According to the documents prepared for AISD, financial modeling

indicates that only once FCIs reach 65% and above, does it begin to make fiscal sense to lookat the replacement of a facility. Barton Hills Elementary was given an FCI 33%. While this isinaccurate and should be lower, this would indicate that replacing the campus would cost 3times as much as renovating it.

The FCIs are inaccurate for multiple reasons: 1) land acquisition was not included in thereplacement costs (while some developers donate land, this is not always the case and could


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impact the numbers dramatically), 2) soft costs that have been factored into the repair costshave been highly inflated (i.e. they are using soft cost as high as 83% in some cases), while forreplacement value they appear to be in line with industry standards, 3) large portions of bondwork that have been completed have still been listed as current deficiencies, 4) accurateconstruction cost estimation can be elusive - the assessments relied heavily on only one sourcefor construction cost data where looking at multiple sources would have been more prudent, 5)ADA/TAS accessibility requirements can be achieved using a variety of strategies some morecost effective than others yet it is unclear what solutions they are considering - it is myunderstanding the public is being prevented from accessing this information by not storing theinformation on AISD property this is especially egregious given that tax payer money wasused to prepare assessments and lacks the transparency intended under state law, 6)deficiency overlaps between ADA/TAS accessibility & building condition assessments do notappear to be adequately reduced, and, finally, 7) inaccurate deficiencies have been included inthe report.

The FCI does not account for design assets that can be hard to achieve in todays constructionmarket in a cost effective way. One example of this would be the durability of the materialsused at our school such as masonry construction throughout.

Known limitations on the assessment of facilities were acknowledged but not addressed in themethodology. For example: the information is out of date as soon as it is collected, qualitycontrol and consistency on assessments is highly difficult for a large portfolio of facilities,detailed life cycle costs are not considered, etc.

The FCI does not address and cannot address important qualitative aspects such as historicalsignificance, enrollment trends, academic achievement, and community sentiment. There isapparently nothing built into the process that would address and compensate for theselimitations.

Please feel free to use this information as needed and dont hesitate to contact me with questions orcomments. I have included a more detailed look of the methodology below that you may also find of interest.Thank you for all your effort in helping maintain the quality of our public elementary schools that they haveworked so hard to achieve.

03/25/11Christopher T. Cobb AIA, Principal Architect

Chris Cobb : Office of Architecture PLLC

Texas Registration No. 17817


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- 3 !of 6

Comments and thoughts on White Paper: Facility Condition Index (FCI) at Austin ISD:General:

In the last five years, every major urban district we have worked with has faced considerableloss of enrollment district-wide which eventually necessitates reducing overall footprint and

closing schools. - This statement seems to contradict the districts own research about

the growing enrollment in AISD. As such, the relevance of this statement to our contextshould be researched and questioned.

Nearly 90 percent of our country s 21st century schools were designed and constructed in the20th century, most in the mid 20th century, under an industrial age factory model with a long

row of classrooms down a double-loaded corridor.I might not understand the metaphor,but schools have never been modeled on factory design. Long double-loaded corridorsare still the primary strategy in school design to this day because of the efficiencies thatcan be achieved in the organization of space. Existing schools with double-loadedcorridors represent the preferred approach to the arrangement of classrooms within aschool and should not be frowned upon.

Unfortunately, deferred maintenance does not go away with reduced funding, and the unmetneed continues to build until the cost to repair eventually exceeds the cost to replace thefacility. It is true that deferred maintenance should be minimized, but it is extremelyrare for the cost of repairs to ever exceed the cost of replacement due to the increasingcosts of new construction. As a note, not one of the elementary school campusesstudied within AISD comes close to the $24.5 million price tag estimated for areplacement facility of 82,500 SF.

Commonly, communities have a widespread perception that school districts shape, hide, ormanipulate building condition data to obtain a desired result. This perception may even result in

a law suit, which creates the necessity to engage in projects that are driven by legal

requirements. This fact illustrates the importance of developing a strong methodologybased on accurate and detailed data regarding the condition of facilities and alsoreinforces why it is beneficial to develop a process where the community could beinvolved early in the process.

Capacities change from year to year, buildings deteriorate on a daily basis, and enrollmentfluctuates. School planners are always working with a moving target. It is unclear whetherthe process has developed a way to handle this complication or if it was simplyaccepted that it would lead to an inaccurate or quickly outdated results.

Financial modeling has shown that over a 30- year period, schools that fall in the 65 percent orgreater range are more cost-effective to replace than to repair. This is due to efficiency gains

with more modern facilities and the value of the building at the end of the analysis period. Of

course, FCI is not the only factor used to identify buildings that need renovation, replacement or

even closure. Historical significance, enrollment trends, community sentiment, and the

availability of capital are additional factors that are analyzed when making school facility

decision. This is a really important point. Often, in the ongoing discussions regardingthe facilities, the FCI has been oversimplified as a comparison between separatefacilities within AISD and that the lower the FCI the better the facility, buildings withhigher FCIs should be replaced. However, it is actually a comparison of the conditionof a school with a hypothetical newly constructed facility of the same size based ontodays standards. So, for example, a building with an FCI of 20% means that it would be5 times more expensive to replace that facility in todays construction dollars; for a


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building with an FCI of 25% it means that it would be 4 times more expensive to replace

that facility in todays dollars; and, for a building with an FCI of 33% it means it would be

3 times more expensive to replace the facility in todays dollars; and so on. Based on

the above quoted financial modeling, it has been determined that a positive financial

gain is only realized once the FCI reaches greater than 65%, so it is otherwise more cost

effective to renovate facilities with much lower FCIs. All but one facility within AISD has

an FCI lower than 65%, and in most cases, the facilities are significantly lower than 65%.Further, as stated, even when the FCI reaches above that, there are other factors to

consider in the process. It appears that these additional factors were completelydisregarded.

Regarding the calculation of the numerators and denominators:

The overall soft costs (monies that must be spent but are outside the actual cost ofconstruction materials and labor - i.e. professional fees, materials testing, permits, program

management, etc.), seem highly inconsistent between new construction and repair work. Note

that it is reasonable to expect higher soft costs for repairs, but almost doubling them is not

consistent with my experience. I would expect total soft costs to range on the low end of 20%

for new construction and upwards to 30% (maybe 35%) for renovation and repairs. The soft

costs used for repairs in the FCI range from 78%-83%, which is surprisingly high and

unexplained. I believe the numbers that were used should be verified and studied in muchmore detail in order to gain a more accurate picture of the actual costs involved.

In particular, there seems to be an overwhelming exaggeration of the soft costs for A/E servicesinvolved for the cost of repairs (15%), but for new construction they are right in line withexpectations (8%).

The highest soft cost listed for the repair work is titled other. There is no accurate way tounderstand the vague classification used and since it is the largest soft cost at 17%, it seems

reasonable to expect it to be a defined and well-understood cost. To give you an idea of the

level of detail that is achievable, in the breakdowns or estimates of soft costs that I use, Iclassify soft costs into 1 of 27 separate categories.

There are no soft cost considerations for land acquisition that would be required for theconstruction of new schools. This may suggest a lower total cost for new construction than isaccurate. A pro forma for commercial development would be negligent to omit such a high cost

item from the soft costs and would lead to a highly inaccurate picture of total costs. Some

could argue that developers often donate land, but this cannot always be assumed and usuallythere are monies allocated by the district for land acquisition.

There is a footnote that states the soft costs were increased to correct deficiencies in apotential capital improvement program, but there is very little background or information givenon the detail surrounding this issue on how it relates to each individual campus deficiency.

One important notion that should be addressed in the report is that buildings constructed prior1970 tend to be constructed of higher quality materials and workmanship, and structurally

superior to buildings today. While this tends to be reversed for the building systems that can

become outdated quickly (such as HVAC, plumbing, and electrical) it should be recognized thatfrom a durability perspective, physical materials used in those periods have much longer life

cycles than can be readily achieved in todays construction market. It should be factored into

the assessment of each campus in order to provide a more accurate assessment of eachfacility.


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Another important consideration is that construction pricing is notoriously difficult to predictwithout detailed construction documents. Until those can be prepared, cost estimating shouldbe considered very speculative in nature. Cost estimations should be conservative and realisticusing detailed written descriptions of materials, methods, and building systems. In addition, it isoften useful to define pricing in varying quality ranges such as high, medium, and low. In orderto establish further credibility, it is prudent not to use a single resource for the cost data (such

as RS Means), but to use additional supplemental information such as the use of anindependent cost estimating consultants and the consultation of multiple contractors familiarwith the local market conditions.

Response to Facilities Conditions and Educational Adequacy Assessment, Barton Hills Elementary SchoolAssessment:

General: Because the soft costs have been overstated by such a large degree, it is my opinionthat the overall cost for repairs should be reduced by a factor of between .38 and .45. Thiswould allow for soft costs in the range of 30%-35% and this would result in a reduction of thetotal costs of deficiencies between $1,854,325 and $2,195,912 (placing the FCI between 12.7%and 15%). An even more conservative approach would be to use a reduction factor of between

.51 and .58. This would allow for soft costs in the range of 40%-45% and this would result in areduction of the total costs of deficiencies between $2,488,700 and $2,830,286 (placing the FCIbetween 17% and 19%).

Site Level Deficiencies:

1. This should be verified with relevant governing authorities, but I believe that the existingfence around the property where the playground equipment is located represents adequatebuffer from the adjacent roads. In addition, I believe the distance of the playground fromthe actual roads is so great, that the requirement for a buffer is not even mandated. Ibelieve the costs for those 2 items could be eliminated as deficiencies.

2. Since the damaged concrete is in the middle of the driveway and not in a pedestrian path,the chances are more likely that students would be hit by a car, than by tripping on thedeteriorated concrete. It may indeed need to be replaced, but it strikes me as odd toidentify it as a trip hazard.

3. School site lacks appropriate lighting this should be verified for accuracy, as site lightingimprovements were included in the recent bond improvements for the school.

4. ADA site deficiencies are extremely difficult to quantify. Often times there are multiplesolutions that could result in substantial cost savings. For example, accessibility to onepublic bus stop at Barton Hills would suggest adding a very substantial ramp to the site,however, if an alternate bus stop is used, no ramp would be required at all, just the additionof some concrete walks instead. Multiple schematic designs should be explored whereaccessibility is concerned.

Building: A-Building A

1. All roofing deficiencies should be eliminated, as the roofing was included in the recent bondimprovements for the school.

2. All miscellaneous interior and exterior deficiencies should be verified for accuracy, as manyof the recent bond improvements for the school included extensive interior & exterior work.

3. All miscellaneous mechanical, electrical, and plumbing deficiencies should be verified foraccuracy, as many of the recent bond improvements for the school included extensive workto these systems.


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M a r c h 2 5 , 2 0 1 1!4. All fire and life safety and surveillance equipment deficiencies should be verified for

accuracy, as many of the recent bond improvements for the school included extensive work

to these systems.

5. Kitchen equipment deficiencies should be eliminated, as those were included in the recentbond improvements for the school.

6. ADA public and program deficiencies should be reduced. In my discussions with thearchitect who performed the accessibility reviews, the estimates used do not reflect the80% reductions that were intended to account for the overlap between the ADA study and

building condition assessments. Further, the adult restrooms that serve the break room

have been updated to meet accessibility codes the associated costs have apparently notbeen removed as deficiencies.

Building: B-Building B

1. All miscellaneous interior and exterior deficiencies should be verified for accuracy, as manyof the recent bond improvements for the school included extensive interior & exterior work.

2. All miscellaneous mechanical, electrical, and plumbing deficiencies should be verified foraccuracy, as many of the recent bond improvements for the school included extensive workto these systems.

Building: P199 P199

1. The requirement for a lift may not be accurate and this deficiency could possibly beremoved or reduced. Since 6 of the 7 portables are fully accessible, it could likely be

argued that adequate access has been provided. Further, if needed, adjustments could be

made to the programmed use of the inaccessible portable to avoid the possibility of a

student not getting the required access. It may also be possible to install a ramp for access

to this portable, which would be much more cost effective than a lift.

Documents

Formal Response to the AISD Facilities Master Plan Report by Friends of Barton Hills Elementary