Thoughts from the field

We’re sweeping up the last of the literal and proverbial confetti following our extended 25th anniversary celebrations. (Technically, we opened our doors 27 years ago in 1996, but Covid interruptions got these festivities rolling a bit later than they otherwise would...

At VPCS, we pride ourselves on the diversity of perspectives that we bring to everything we do. That includes a staff with a gender mix that more closely matches the actual population and is dramatically more balanced than the industry average. (Women account for 45%...

At VPCS, we have more than 25 years of experience supporting the K-12 sector, and we’re proud of the ever-growing roster of school districts around the state that have trusted us to oversee their facilities work. While our larger district clients and their more...

Project Manager Jennifer Kerr, who joined the VPCS team in 2017, brings a lot to the table, whether that table is in a conference room, a kitchen, an art studio or a foreign country. Read on to learn more about just a few of Jennifer’s many skills and experiences. Q:...

It’s a new year, and that means the start of our industry’s conference season. We’ll kick things off in a few weeks at the Coalition for Adequate School Housing (CASH) 44th Annual Conference on School Facilities, to be held February 22-24 at the SAFE Credit Union...

As we wrap up another year, the VPCS family extends our warmest wishes to clients, colleagues, associates and friends. We are so grateful to all the talented, dedicated people in our professional community who inspire us every day to go above and beyond. Here’s to a...

The 2022 election cycle has come to a close. In many California communities, voters were asked to support local K-12 school bonds. For districts whose bond measures passed, this is roll-up-the-sleeves time. As experienced program managers (PMs), VPCS has seen many...

The end of the calendar year is when school districts begin to think about the tasks – particularly related to paperwork and documentation – that need to be done to ensure that everything is in order prior to kicking off a new year. With 2023 right around the corner,...

November is just around the corner, which means it’s almost time for Californians to go to the polls. Election season is especially important to those of us in school construction because it’s when voters cast their ballots for school bond measures for K-12 and...

Late August is always an exciting time on K-12 campuses as teachers, staff, students and families prepare for the start of a new school year. But for those of us in school construction, it’s the end of a very busy season. We work hard all year round, but summertime is...

Big news from the VPCS home office: We’re excited to announce that Jennifer Gibb has joined our ranks as our inaugural director of business development. We talked with Jennifer and VPCS Vice President Kelli Van Pelt Jurgenson about this exciting new addition to the...

We always enjoy delivering spectacular projects to our clients, and the new CORE Building on the Hayward campus of California State University East Bay (CSUEB) is certainly no exception. Work is nearly complete on this state-of-the-art, $85 million, 100,000 square...

Since joining us in 2018, Charles Harbour has been applying his project management skills to multiple sites around the Berkeley Unified School District. While he’s a great construction management professional, he’s also a great addition to our team because of all the...

Nobody knows better than Phyllis Silverstein the staggering amount of documentation that’s tied to a school bond program. Since she joined us in 2018, she’s been one of our key team members whose job it is to keep things running smoothly in the San Rafael City Schools...

If two heads are better than one, then 50 heads are … well, you do the math. At VPCS, we believe so strongly in applying our collective wisdom to all of our active projects that we’ve operationalized it. Relying on a simple shared chat tool, we have created an...

As we enter our 25th year of operation, I look back to the beginning when my brother, Mike, and I had this vision: Let’s put together a small team of people to provide a construction management product better than what we had worked with at our dad’s firm. The “small...

At this time of year, we always pause to acknowledge all that we’re grateful for and express thanks to the people who brighten our lives, both at work and at home. This year in particular, during such unprecedented times, it seems especially important to count the...

In the more than two decades since Operations Manager Christine Diamond joined VPCS, she has been instrumental in helping us adapt and grow into what we are today. But Christine brings so much more to our team than what her title implies. Yes, she’s skilled at the...

These days, teams responsible for new construction or modernization projects on school campuses know that safety and security are just as critical as structural integrity. In my role as a VPCS project manager, I work closely with project teams to prioritize student...

Like communities around the world, businesses are asking important and long overdue questions about equity and bias: How can team rosters be strengthened by diversity? Are hiring practices fair? Do systemic prejudices exist in our industries? What might be done...

Managing construction projects means tracking an enormous number of details. It also means communicating information to key audiences when those details affect them. On K-12 school sites, we share this responsibility with districts, site staff and other local...