My official title here at VPCS is Administrative Assistant. But sometimes I think I should change it to Mortar Assistant, given all the ways I fill in the gaps.
When people ask me what I do at work, I usually answer with a very enthusiastic, “Whatever’s needed!” In other words, my job responsibilities include everything from processing forms to taking minutes, researching change orders, organizing moves, and more. Another thing that takes a significant portion of my time – and is one of the highlights of my job – is planning, managing and producing events.
I am part of the VPCS team overseeing the $269 million bond program in the Napa Valley Unified District. Needless to say, there are lots of events associated with such an enormous undertaking. I coordinate ribbon cuttings, groundbreaking ceremonies, community meetings, and bond oversight meetings. I’m also responsible for publicizing these events via the District website, social media channels, banners, brochures, etc. And that’s not all. It’s also my job to handle all the little things that VPCS does for every client. For example, we recently moved teachers into the new Snow Elementary School campus, and we put together gift bags with welcome letters and a site map to help ease the teachers’ transitions into their new setting.
I really enjoy this “hospitality” part of my job and it’s something I have a lot of experience with. Before coming to VPCS, I spent 20 years on staff at Walt Disney World, with the last six years in the Resort Sales and Weddings departments coordinating multimillion-dollar events. After relocating to California, I worked at a global wine company, where I planned wine dinners, team-building events, education seminars, executive retreats, and whatever other events came along.
It’s critical to be detail-oriented and really organized when putting on an event of any size. Plus, of course, you have to make contingency plans for when things don’t go precisely as expected, then stay calm while you adapt to those inevitable hiccups. (We once hosted a groundbreaking ceremony on a 102-degree day, but were able at the last minute to gather the necessary supplies to provide ice-cold water and pop-up tents for shade to help keep our guests happy and comfortable.) Most importantly, I always try to just smile and stay positive. Because if people are having a good time, that’s the memory they’ll take with them.
Making sure an event runs smoothly or assembling little gifts for teachers are just a couple of the countless ways VPCS delivers quality and solidity to our clients. These details reflect our commitment to doing our jobs well – and to always going above and beyond what’s simply required of us. As Mortar Assistant, I’m just helping keep the pieces in place.
When I was hired by Mark Van Pelt, a little over three years ago, I never would have imagined that my responsibilities would include categorizing, tracking and reconciling budgets totaling more than $268 million dollars. After all, I have a literature degree and I rarely, if ever, balance my own checkbook. But as of my first day with this firm, I began an intense practical education in school bonds and bond program accounting as part of our work on behalf of the San Rafael City School District.
Here’s the easiest way to describe how school bonds work: school districts use bond funds to pay for school repairs, upgrades and new construction. Bond measures are voted in and funded through property taxes paid by the voters, and are expended only for very specific and defined purposes. Every penny spent through bonds are reviewed, evaluated and re-evaluated not only by the voters but also by the School District Board of Education, parents, teachers, oversight committees, and anybody else interested in studying complex fiscal structures.
Needless to say, it was important that I quickly learn the nuts and bolts of bond accounting – as well as the many subtleties – as a way of protecting our clients’ interests.
Early on in my tenure at VPCS, the firm invested in accounting software that assists in systematically registering every project and tracking each financial transaction involved in a large program. The application helps with everything from paying an invoice to setting up a purchase order, staying on top of retentions, managing change orders, tracking contract contingencies, and more.
As I got up to speed on the San Rafael City School District bond program and more deeply involved in managing its accounting, the software helped simplify the process and … I’ll admit it … make it fun! Not only are we able to track every project budget to the penny, but we’re also able to answer and accommodate every question, every request for information and any inquiry regarding proper usage of bond funds. With this, our team here at San Rafael City Schools has built a very clean and systematic approach to bond accounting.
With regard to our approach, the Van Pelt team stands by three fundamentals: consistency, transparency, and accountability.
We insist on consistency when establishing and modifying contracts and when paying all invoices. Once Board-approved, all contracts are entered into the software application and every subsequent invoice follows an identical chain of approval involving four signatures in proper sequence: the bond accountant, the bond operations manager, the construction manager, and the senior director. We follow this process 100% of the time.
We have maintained an “open door policy” with regard to all accounting transactions. We prepare and supply regular budget and expenditure reports to the members of the Board of Education, the Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee and the surrounding community. Our goal is to maintain 100% transparency in all that we do.
Through our signature process, we’ve established a line of accountability ensuring that all four signatories review every transaction for accuracy and bond funds are spent as approved by the voters.
We have found that maintaining a sound process, along with continued collaboration with the district accounting team, allows us to pay invoices accurately and on time. This has proven to strengthen our current and potential future relationships with consultants and contractors.
Throughout the San Rafael City Schools’ bond programs, it has been a source of great pride for the Van Pelt team to maintain a record of “zero findings” on each of the annual fiscal and performance audits. These audits are performed by public accountants hired by the school district as required by bond language. To administer audits, two or three auditors set up shop in a nearby office and arbitrarily request bond-related documents that might pertain to invoicing, contracts or some kind of adherence to a state mandate. We’ve been fortunate to work with some very helpful auditing teams and have enjoyed the challenge.
Our bond programs here in San Rafael are slated to be complete sometime within the next three years. I look forward to continuing my education into the intricacies of bond accounting and taking what I learn to the next project. But I’m not going to lie: I might not ever get into the habit of balancing my checkbook!
Around here, I’m known as the VPCS “oshpod guy.” That’s because I’m considered the in-house expert on all the regulations related to California’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, commonly referred to by the acronym OSHPD. This is the agency that inspects construction at every acute care hospital and skilled nursing facility in the state and decides whether a building is safe to open. Securing an OSHPD Certificate is a final pre-occupancy hurdle for any healthcare construction project. And it’s a big one.
In my career as a project manager, I’ve probably overseen about 50 OSHPD reviews. No matter how closely a project has been managed, how well it has been built, and how carefully it has been engineered, there are always those little things that OSHPD inspectors find that they want tweaked. That’s how rigorous the process is. In fact, OSHPD is recognized as one of, if not the toughest building authorities in the world. But it’s all in the name of occupant safety, which is what we’re all here to achieve.
So those of us who help bring new healthcare structures to life here in California know that an OSHPD review can be nerve-wracking, but it’s just part of our job. Having our work “blessed” by OSHPD means we’ve served our clients well by delivering a great building.
That’s why it was so thrilling for us when the NorthBay Medical Center $200 million campus modernization project in Fairfield, VPCS’s biggest-ever hospital assignment, recently received its OSHPD Certificate of Occupancy.
The inspectors explored every nook and cranny of this brand new 75,000 square foot tower, including its operating and diagnostic imaging departments, 22 med-surg beds, commercial kitchen, and expansive dining room. Their “thumbs up” clears the way for the project to earn final approval from the California Department of Public Health so that NorthBay can welcome patients into the new wing beginning in October.
Of course, we’ve had OSHPD inspectors coming and going throughout the construction phase at NorthBay, as is the typical practice. At every turn – whether during the monthly OSHPD walk-throughs or at specific milestone points along the way, such as before we closed up any ceiling – my colleagues from Ratcliff Architects and DPR Construction helped me usher our visitors through the building so they could kick the proverbial tires. When questions or concerns arose, it was my responsibility as the owner’s representative to come up with a strategic way to address the issue with minimal impact on time and budget. The fact that we had so few OSHPD findings on this project is a testament to its designers and builders.
One of the tricky aspects of working on an OSHPD job is managing changes. Every construction project comes with changes, and we always work closely with the architects, engineers and builders to carefully document and adjust to them when they occur. But when OSHPD is involved, even the smallest change requires a far more detailed and lengthy approval process before anyone can proceed. And that can take months.
Here’s an example of how we adapted to a relatively big mid-stream change on the NorthBay job while protecting the project’s financial and schedule parameters: Initially, there were six ORs specified for the third-floor operating suite. But halfway through construction, NorthBay realized they needed eight. So I sat down with DPR and Ratcliff to figure out how to keep the project’s pace going while OSHPD conducted its review of this new plan. We determined that we could reverse the order of how the building would come together – going from the first floor up, rather than from the third floor down. (We originally set out to tackle the third floor first, given its complex infrastructure and equipment requirements.) This allowed us to keep moving forward on the first- and second-floor elements while OSHPD studied and ultimately approved the new third-floor OR drawings. Adapting to this new sequence and bumping up to a six-day, ten-hour schedule meant we were able to mitigate major schedule delays and shield the client from crippling budget overruns.
Now that we’ve received NorthBay’s Certificate of Occupancy and the job is in its home stretch, I can take a moment to look back on this exceptional and rewarding project. Once again, VPCS has had the honor of working alongside some fantastic design and construction professionals and on behalf of a great client. For me, this project has also been particularly poignant because the new tower is connected by an elevated walkway to the original NorthBay Medical Center – a project my dad helped build back in his pre-VPCS days when he was working for Lathrop Construction. So this site has been a source of professional pride in our family for decades.
Thanks, OSHPD, for the vote of confidence and for helping give Solano County access to the spectacularly expanded NorthBay Medical Center.
Even the most talented percussionists, the most eloquent string players, and brass instrumentalists with world-class cardio strength aren’t much use without a conductor. The conductor pulls those individually talented elements together to produce the symphony.
That’s what a senior project manager (SPM) who oversees multiple construction projects within a single program does. Like a symphonic conductor, an SPM is charged with assembling instruments that might otherwise go their own way without careful coordination. (And the fact that most of them come from different unions adds yet another layer of complexity.) The SPM provides direction, purpose and meaning to the various projects, molding all the distinct parts into a format that will be … and please pardon the pun … music to a client’s ears.
When SPMs are asked what we do for a living, most of us usually answer by saying something general about how we’re associated with construction. The reality is, we’re in the service industry. We provide a service to owners who need our expertise to deliver products they might struggle to deliver on their own. Each of us is part accountant, carpenter, lawyer, banker, owner’s representative, public speaker, janitor, public official, and more. Because of the many hats we wear, SPMs who manage multiple large projects at once spend a good portion of our time serving as the single source of information for our clients. It’s our job to retain and deliver global knowledge of every active project included in a program. That means everything from schedules to move dates to budgets to paint colors – everything the owner might want to know at any point.
I have the distinct honor of serving as VPCS’s SPM keeping an eye on all the projects that are distributed throughout the Napa Valley Unified School District (NVUSD) and included in the $269 million Measure H bond program. VPCS has a diverse, multi-talented team sharing the sizeable workload for these different projects. Our on-site construction managers provide the daily on-the-ground, close-contact, detailed management of our projects. Our admins support these efforts with myriad duties ranging from scheduling to move coordination. Everyone has distinct strengths and it’s up to the SPM not only to understand them but also to provide services on each project to complement them. This means something slightly different on each project. One project may require that we take a larger role in civil activities while another may require that we be more heavily involved in proposed change order negotiations. Determining the depth of the SPM’s role on each project requires an in-depth understanding of the client’s needs, focus and goals.
When an SPM is entrusted with managing multiple projects, it is both humbling and an honor. Not only are our clients trusting us with some of their most critical functions, they are also usually relying on us to protect the taxpayers who are actually paying for the work. It’s our job to ensure that if our clients go to those taxpayers with a bond in the future, they can state with confidence that their tax dollars were used wisely and provided their community with value.
At NVUSD, we are also lucky to be surrounded by an extremely hard working, dedicated school staff. From teachers to management, everyone we work with is fully committed to providing a robust educational experience to the citizens of Napa.
We are well into our management of the Measure H bond program at NVUSD, with fantastic projects close to completion and even more upcoming. It is truly a pleasure meeting the many challenges of managing multiple, unique and dynamic projects, especially when I get to represent such a stellar client and work with a VPCS team that takes such pride in their work. Together, we’re making beautiful music!
Last month, my (younger!) brother Mark wrote a piece for the VPCS blog reflecting on his first 40 years in the construction industry. It’s hard to believe that we’ve both been in this business for as long as we have. I suppose one of the reasons the time has flown is that we’ve spent it doing what we love.
Over the years, I’ve worked on many projects that I hold near and dear to my heart. What could be more satisfying than helping deliver schools, hospitals and community centers? But there’s one project that stands out for me personally as one of the most meaningful: the George Mark Children’s House.
I’ve been thinking a lot about George Mark since I saw an article in a recent issue of The New York Times Magazine that mentioned it and other children’s hospice and respite centers like it. The article’s descriptions of the various amenities built into these properties that smooth the way for sick kids and their families took me back to when we were helping get George Mark off the ground in the early 2000s.
I’ll never forget the call that started it all. A long-time colleague and friend Mark and I knew through the Bay Area hospital construction community reached out to say he had an opportunity he thought we’d be perfect for, adding a detail we rarely hear in this business. He explained that while most construction projects have no money and a lot of help, this one was just the opposite because the money was there but nobody was on board to steer the ship. He told me he thought Van Pelt Construction Services would be ideal.
That project was the George Mark Children’s House. And our friend was right. It was the perfect job for us.
There’s plenty you can learn about George Mark by going to its website, or watching its amazing founder, Kathy Hull, deliver her powerful TED Talk on the subject. So I won’t go into too much detail on the specs of the place here, other than to describe it as the first freestanding children’s respite and end-of-life care facility in the United States. Kathy had been a pediatric psychologist at Oakland Children’s Hospital who saw a need for this type of property and took it on as her personal mission to open the first of its kind in the country.
We were brought on as the project managers representing the owner. Kathy had already secured the services of a designer and a builder, but neither had any experience in healthcare. Specifically, they had never worked with the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD), which is California’s regulatory body that, among other things, grants the necessary permits for all healthcare structures. Since George Mark would technically be classified as a skilled nursing facility, it needed to get very specific approvals from OSHPD before a single shovel could hit the dirt.
So VPCS came on the scene. First, we saw the project through all the necessary pre-construction steps. Then we helped oversee it as it came to life. I remember a few of the more difficult aspects of trying to get the state to understand what we were trying to accomplish. Yes, this was a medical facility but it needed to look and feel more like a residential structure, complete with fireplaces, playrooms, classrooms, bedrooms, a waterfall and even a small chapel. Whenever OSHPD or the fire marshall said no to something we proposed, we just had to work with them until we all figured out how to get to a mutually satisfactory approval.
As Kathy Hull loves to say about George Mark’s mission, “The point is to abolish limitations; to have your default answer be ‘Yes’ and your default question be ‘Why not?’”
These days, my own kids work right here at VPCS, running their own impressive projects (quite skillfully, I must add). But back when it was my job to manage the George Mark project, my son and daughter were still young. I couldn’t help thinking about the families who would be coming through George Mark’s doors; how unimaginable it would be to have a terminally ill child. I was determined, just like everyone on that job, to do everything I could to deliver a beautiful, peaceful, nurturing place for every family who would show up at George Mark.
I take a lot of pride in every project I work on. But there’s something about this one that has affected me professionally and personally a little more than others, even after all these years. It’s such an honor to have been given the chance to help it take shape.
I started my career in construction on June 16, 1979 at 7:00 a.m. (The photo above was taken that very week.) Since then, I’ve collected paychecks from two companies: Lathrop Construction Associates and Van Pelt Construction Services, the latter of which I co-founded in 1996.
On that fateful first day of work nearly 40 years ago, I was assigned as a general laborer to a Lathrop project in Oakland, California. We were building an addition to Roosevelt Junior High School. My very first duty in my career was to pour grout into structural column base plates. Sounded easy enough. The labor foreman suggested that I carry two buckets at a time. “You’d hate to have one arm longer than the other at the end of the week,” he said to me. I didn’t really understand what he meant until I attempted to pick up the first bucket, which I filled with WAY too much grout. It weighed about 90 pounds. I had to carry this bucket through a mine field of scrap rebar, open trenches, slippery mud, broken boards, back-up alarms, and general construction chaos – all the while hearing, “Hurry it up, Van Pelt! That grout better not start setting up!” Tripping, huffing, puffing, grunting, and hurting, I somehow managed to make it (but just barely) to the baseplate that was waiting for my load of grout. I proudly emptied the contents of the half-filled five-gallon bucket into the form around the plate, but couldn’t believe that it barely dented the total amount needed. I hurried back to mix another bucketful, using a half-inch drill motor with a piece of #4 rebar shaped into a mixing wand. Six more loads into the same baseplate until it was finally full! I was completely exhausted, but extremely proud of my accomplishment. Then the labor foreman yelled, “Come on Van Pelt! Two hundred and twenty-five more to go! Hurry your ass up!” I remember thinking, “Is this what I signed up for?”
June 16, 1979 was the longest day of my life.
Coming up on my 40-year professional anniversary, I’ve been reminiscing more than usual. I think about what I have been so fortunate to have witnessed over this four-decade span of time. The TV remote, desktop computers, ATMs, email, the Internet, and the ubiquitous smart phone. Who could have possibly known that most everything my brother and I were watching on Star Trek on Tuesday nights at 8:00 p.m. would eventually be available to us? (Except for the “Beam me up, Scotty” technology, which is probably the one I would utilize the most.)
Obviously, construction sites have seen the same staggering progress. We don’t have any paper drawings or specifications any longer. EVERYTHING is on our phones, iPads and the Cloud. Literally, no paper files. At the end of a $100 million project, we hand the team a thumb drive. Before, it was 75-100 banker boxes along with 500 rolls of drawings. Now, just one tiny little thumb drive. Amazing.
I asked one of our young project managers the other day if he knew what CC stands for in his email application. His response was just a puzzled look. When I told him CC stood for carbon copy, he continued to give me that same baffled look. I tried to explain: “You know, carbon paper? The sheet behind the original document? The copy? You mail it to … oh, never mind. Let’s go to lunch.”
My point is this: a guy like me, who started in the Polaroid camera era and now functions in the hashtag world, well, I see things through a completely different lens. Am I a dinosaur? Hell yes, I am and I’m proud of it! Somehow I’ve managed to ride this techno wave and remain functional. My co-founder, Mike, has done the same. I believe that our ability to manage VPCS effectively is completely reliant upon and a result of our insistence to stay on top of this almost light-speed progression not just of technology but of the construction business as a whole. We’ve found some pretty effective ways to navigate through the changing times.
Still, I have to confess that every once in a while, I wish I could mix up some grout and stumble around a job site. Then I’d step back and take a Polaroid snapshot to capture a memento of a hard day’s work.
