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To the editor:
I continue to enjoy reading The Illinois School Board Journal. It is easily one of the premier educational magazines published by state school boards associations across the United States.
An article I particularly enjoyed was published in the July-August 2008 edition titled, "Schools learn to embrace managed construction," by Amy Berg. It brought back a bagful of mixed emotions.
The "lesson" of managed construction of school buildings was not an easy or pleasant one to learn for school boards and school administrators. But the proof of the worth of learning it ultimately came forth.
I was deputy superintendent for administration and general counsel of the San Diego City Schools in the mid-1970s. I was responsible to the superintendent and school board for a massive school building project begun under a new state lease-purchase law that I helped write.
The director of school construction on my staff was Harold Culver, one of the truly brilliant school administrators I had ever known. He proposed that we embark upon what then was a brand new approach to building schools. Its main thrust was for the district to retain professional construction managers (a new profession) who would be the district's advocate in working with architects, structural engineers, contractors and their sub-contractors.
I decided to go that route as he had proposed and persuaded the superintendent and school board of the rightness of that recommendation. The school board approved the new approach and, literally, all hell broke loose.
The architects viewed it as a scheme to destroy their professional status and interpose third parties between them and the district, contractors took umbrage at having someone flyspeck their work, and engineers said they would be caught in the middle of their architects and school district clients.
Even the taxpayers associations cried "more high cost bureaucracy!" Their representatives protested at public school board meetings and the architects I had known for many years would shun me at Rotary Club meetings. But, we persisted and the school board took the heat graciously.
It wasn't long as the building program progressed that we were able to show the dollar savings, the improvements in meeting time schedules, the successes of receiving the benefits of high quality products used and workmanship done, and the drop in the number of change orders as people got things right the first time.
Also, the bogeymen that the construction managers were supposed to be never appeared. Indeed, with school board support, the construction managers were able to work collegially and congenially with the other professionals as a solid team. The huge building program moved ahead to a successful conclusion that ended with tens of thousands of students housed in modern buildings with the latest educational facilities. Great credit was due to construction managers who knew their job and were able to bring the whole team of professionals together in a productive way.
The unsung heroes of the saga, as always, were the school board members who courageously backed the superintendent and moved the district into a new era of school building construction.
Thomas A. Shannon
Attorney/Executive Director Emeritus
National School Boards Association
Arlington, Virginia