Right the First Time

Roebbelen nears completion
on Dougherty Valley, Vista del Lago high schools

By David Silva

When Bob Kjome, vice president of preconstruction for El Dorado Hills-based Roebbelen, talks of the challenges the construction industry faces when building large public school projects in California, he doesn’t express concern for rising materials or fuel costs.

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Nor does he mention the task of dealing with multiple government agencies or staying within the letter of the state’s formidable environmental regulations.

Kjome, whose company is construction manager for two of Northern California’s largest school projects – Dougherty Valley High School in San Ramon and Vista del Lago High in Folsom, says the problem of delays.

“Shrinking time frames are always a challenge,” Kjome adds. “Especially with these large projects with short time frames, the projects are scheduled to be finished when school starts, and you’ve really got to find efficiencies in doing things quickly and correctly the first time.”

Kjome’s concerns about the high cost of delays are all the more reasonable given the high costs of the projects at hand. At 300,000 sq ft, Dougherty Valley High is valued at $144 million, while the 169,800-sq-ft Vista del Lago weighs in at $79.5 million. Given that Roebbelen spent nearly a $500,000 a day on Dougherty High in January alone, a delay of just one week could be disastrous.

In other words, Kjome says, planning ahead was everything.

“A significant source of delay is in obtaining approval from the Division of State Architect,” he says. “Any school project has to have approval from them. One of the ways we’ve dealt with this is by obtaining approval incrementally. The big high schools had two increments for bidding – a site-preparation increment and a building increment, and then we bid them together.

“At Dougherty, we have a site development phase and then a building phase. At Vista, we had a site development phase and then phase-one building and phase-two building.”

Site preparation for Dougherty Valley High began in May 2005, and construction of the buildings began in February 2006. Designed by Akol & Yoshii Architects and Engineers of Walnut Creek, the project includes four two-story classroom buildings, a career technology building, administration building and a commons building housing library and cafeteria facilities. A theater arts complex will feature a 400-seat auditorium and vocal and instrumental music rehearsal rooms.

The school will sport an elaborate athletics complex, including a main gymnasium capable of hosting 1,200 spectators, as well as locker rooms, team rooms and PE/coaching staff offices. It will also include an auxiliary gym, two baseball and two softball fields, eight lighted tennis and four basketball courts, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and all-weather field and track in a 2,000-seat stadium.

The school will service an estimated 2,200 students, grades nine through 12, in the San Ramon Valley Unified School District. It is scheduled to open in August.

Sacramento-based Rainforth Grau Architects designed Vista del Lago High. Plans call for a 23,821-sq-ft core curriculum building, 22,000 sq ft of science classroom facilities, administration building and multipurpose building, 13,000-sq-ft library jointly developed with the city of Folsom and a 35,790-sq-ft performing arts building. 

It will also feature a 31,800-sq-ft gymnasium, two softball fields, two baseball fields, synthetic-turf field with field lights, soccer field, and tennis and basketball courts.
Work started on the project in August 2005. Once completed, Vista del Lago – part of the Folsom Cordova Unified School District -- will be home to about 1,500 students who would otherwise attend the severely overcrowded Folsom High.

Kjome says Roebbelen expects an August completion date for phase one, which includes six buildings and site development. Phase two should be finished in March 2008.

As construction managers, Roebbelen oversees almost every element of the project, including administrating the contracts with about 25 contractors assigned by the district.

“We’ve been working closely with the design team to ensure that the budget and the design are married together,” says Kjome. “We worked during the preconstruction phase with both the owners and architects to not only refine the duration of the project, but to provide cost estimating and budgeting.”

Roebbelen’s short construction window led to a lot of what Kjome described as “creative processes,” such as preordering materials with long lead times – and significant pre-building.

“At Dougherty, we prefabricated most of the wood-framed classroom buildings in our carpentry yard and then erected them after they were prefabricated,” he says. “We picked up a lot of time there.”

Also helping speed things along was Roebbelen’s experience in working with school districts. Founded in 1959 and in the construction management arena since 2000, the company has built more than 350 public schools.

It was that experience and Roebbelen’s track record with Folsom Cordova that prompted the district to choose it as construction manager. The company built Folsom High 10 years ago, says Debbie Bettencourt, deputy superintendent of Folsom Cordova.

“We select our construction manager based on their previous experience,” Bettencourt adds. “We think it’s important they know how to run a hard-bid job, and they have expertise in dealing with multiple contractors.  Roebbelen has done 40-plus projects for us, and they haven’t failed us yet.”

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