By DAVE RAUMA
For The Beachcomber
Vashon High School has outlived its useful life. It is beyond repair and requires new design and vision. We have the design and vision; now is the time to move forward and build it.
Vashon Island School District has come up with a design and program that will solve a number of current problems with the high school.
An improved site plan offers traffic flows separate from pedestrian traffic. This will be markedly safer than the current setting, where students must navigate through the parking lot and moving traffic as they move between classes. The new site will offer better lighting and walkways for access to the school building and athletic facilities.
The overall building plan will create more effective spaces for learning. Classrooms will accommodate our students and teachers along with updated IT systems that will be used for learning. Teachers will have space for lesson planning, teaming with other teachers and student tutoring.
New and economically sound mechanical and electrical systems will help save energy and require less upkeep, leaving more time for preventive maintenance. The building occupants will have consistent temperatures throughout the facility. The lighting systems will be economical and foster an improved working environment. Fire, life and safety systems (fire sprinklers and fire alarms) will be put in place to protect our people and buildings.
The time is right. While construction costs escalated over the past several years, we are now coming out of a worldwide building boom. Construction demand had an impact on the availability of raw materials needed for the manufacturing of construction materials, such as concrete and steel. We had record high prices for petroleum, which is needed for many building products, from asphalt to plastics.
With the high volume of construction worldwide, there were major price increases for building material, which caused cost escalation of construction projects in the neighborhood of 40 percent.
Along with the high demand for material, there was a labor shortage. In the Puget Sound region, projects had few bidders bidding projects. Public projects that typically received six to 10 bidders were receiving one or two bidders for their projects. General contractors had few subcontractors bidding work. This was a non-competitive environment that created significant increases in the cost of construction.
The current economic climate is quite different. Construction volume is down worldwide. The home building market is still at rock bottom. The commercial construction market is down. As a professional in the field, I believe the commercial construction market is easily in a two- to three-year recession. Material prices have leveled off; labor rates are predicable, and we have a surplus of labor.
Now is the time to bid the high school project. High competition has driven prices down. I have seen projects come in well below anticipated estimates of late because of the level of competition in the market place. Building the project now is the smart thing to do from a cost perspective and the right thing to do for our economy. People need the work.
The high school campus has reached the end of its livable life. It is so obsolete in so many ways that it is now beyond repair. Now is the time to build and take advantage of the current competitive construction market. We will see a very wise investment payoff for our students, teachers and community.
— David Rauma, a father of two Vashon Island School District students, is a senior manager for a large commercial general contractor and the current president of The Bounty Club, a football booster club for McMurray Middle School and
Vashon High School.
