The Master Planning Process

The data collection phase establishes the existing context for decision making in the development of the long-term plan. This begins with an understanding of the District and its strategic objectives. This information hleps the planning team to understand educational goals and desired outcomes, the history of previous facility planning and building programs, and overall priorities. This is the lens through which future decision making is made.

District Standards

A facility master plan should always reflect the long-term implementation of recommendations. To that end, any available district standards are reviewed to ensure that recommendations conform with operational practices and can be reasonably implemented and maintained over time. 

Demographics and Capacity Analysis

A detailed demographics study provides historical and projected enrollment trends for each school site and the District in aggregate. This information is used to determine facility needs as they relate to capacity in the near-term, medium term, and long-term. The demographics report also provides statistical data regarding facility usage of specific school sites and can inform programmatic decision making. 

Assessment teams conducted walk-through surveys of each facility and site to observe systems and components, identify physical deficiencies, and formulate recommendations to remedy the physical deficiencies. As part of the walk through sruvey, the assessment team surveyed 100% of the each facility, including exterior and grounds, building exterior, roofs, sidewalk/pavement, playgrounds, and fields.

The assessment team also interviewed building maintenance staff to gain an understanding of each site's historical repairs / replacements and their costs; level of preventative maintenance exercised, pending repairs and improvements, and frequency of repairs and replacements.

Facility Condition Index

A facility condition index is calculated for each building. The index is a function of required repairs compared to building replacement costs (Cost of Reparis / Total Cost of Building Replacement)

The facility master plan seeks to support the District's long-term educational goals. To do this, the planning ream first develops an understanding of desired outcomes, curriculum frameworks, and instructional delivery methodologies. The planning process then establishes a vision for environments, spaces, and adjacencies that support those educational outcomes. This framework serves as the basis of future design and implementation of the plan at each individual site. 

Stakeholder Engagement

Stakeholder engagement is a critical component of the master planning process. Users, District leadership, and community members all provide unique perspectives which inform the final plan. They hlep to establish guiding principles, uncover specific needs, and develop priorities for implementation. The engagement process is layered and iterative, continually gathering input and feedback to build consensus over time an dbetween the various stakeholder groups.

While the condition assessment provides an understanding of the current state of facilities, and the educational vision identifies the desired outcomes (future state) of facilities; the scopes of work demonstrate the steps needed to move from current state to future state. Related costs are developed to proivde a reasonable budget for implemtning the plan over the long term. 

Site master plans provide project scopes to address needs identified in the condition assessment, demographics analysis, and stakeholder engagement. Scopes are identified as modernization, reconfiguration of spaces, and new construction. Specific programmatic-related scopes of work are also identified across each site.

The financial assessment, which serves as the master budget, provides a summary of projected costs for the recommended facility nedds and scopes of work at each site. The report includes life-cycle repair and/or replacement line items as well as proposed modernization and new construction projects.

The master budget identifies costs at a system level basis utilizing master format divisions of work. This program level master budget has been drafted based on 2025 industry costs. Each phase of implementation will require adjustment of escalation and overall market conditions foe each year.

Determining Project Costs

Project costs are determined using a databse of costs based on a combination of cost estimating resrouces including RS Means and Sierra West cost Estimating manuals; third pary cost estimators; recent, comparable bid estimates; as well as estimates proivde by local contractors and material suppliers as a benchmark for validation and adjustment.

This method of estimation is intended to provide a guide for project budgeting parameters. It is not a detailed estimation of project costs, as projects have only been identified in broad scope.

When reviewing associated cost estimates, it is important to note that project costs differ from construction cost estimates because they include both "hard" and "soft" costs. 

Hard Costs

Hard construction costs include the cost of labor and materials for the contemplated on-site improvements along with a reasonable multiplier for the contractor's adminstration, overhead, and profit.

Soft Costs

Soft costs are in addition to hard construction costs and generally include desing, plan review, inspection, and agency fees. An additional contingency is included to account for any unforeseen conditions and potential changes as are typical over the course of design and construction.

Escalation

Finally, an escalation factor is applied to each project phase to account for the inflation in construciton cost over time. Construciton cost escalation is calculated by applying an annual increase-commonly a fixed percentage - to the base cost of a project to estimate future expenses more accurately. In this case, a 4% escalation rate is used to reflect anticipated increases in construction costs due to inflation and economic trends. Although this is a snapshot of project budgeting, ocsts and escalation may continue to increase and are affected by the condition of the economy and inflation. It is improtant for planning teams to periodically update these estimates to remain aligned with actual market conditions.