Why Don't We Have Walls YET???

We wrote that exact sentence to our contractor this week. What he told us in response both makes us very excited AND very frustrated at the same time. This is his response to us:

We have completed underground electrical tie ins to the buildings and are now working on underground plumbing. Weather dependent, we should have the plumbing signed off in C and A building by early next week. The sheer footings are installed. Once we receive inspections, we will pour the slabs on C and A buildings. We still need final drawings on the B building.

Once we have slab on grade next week, we should begin framing right away.

Here are some lessons that we have learned:


1. Never build a building when you are the only project in town IF YOU HAVE A TIGHT TIMELINE. The reason: Because the inspectors have time to be on site every day inspecting daily what would normally be inspected monthly if at all. The inspections are ensuring that the new Little School building is the safest building that we can possibly build BUT it is also slowing everything way, way, way down.


2. Work with a local architect because they are familiar with the inspectors and their relationship will make the permitting and inspections process MUCH easier. This is particularly true in town and county-related code compliance issues. It does not seem like it should continue to be difficult to translate Hillsborough/Orange County codes into Durham County codes (our architect is in Durham County) and back again this late in the process but it truly is and it takes a tremendous amount of time to mobilize all of the architects and engineers to make changes that would be accounted for easily with a local architect.


3. Plan an extra six months into the time line. This is a DUH! but folks kept telling us that with things being as slow as they are in the building market that things would move very quickly. Refer to item #1 for an explanation of why that is not the case.


The truth is that our crew is moving as fast as they possibly can. We still have December 13th as our outside date and we are still being told that they want to bring it to a close earlier than that date. We really appreciate all of the hard work and dedication of our entire team- architects, engineers, builders, inspectors, and our wonderful project manager. These are incredible people who truly want the very best for this project and are going above and beyond in many instances to see that happen.


Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

**The half day program is on schedule for a September opening. Please check back next week for more information.


Glimpse:
Our staff are our family, our friends, our people and we love them. We consider ourselves incredibly fortunate to be able to write that and mean it 100% when we do so. These people are incredibly precious to us and we want to do everything that we can to retain them. To that end, we have built a benefit package that we are very proud to offer them. The package currently includes health, life, dental and vision insurance benefits as well as paid leave, unpaid leave, paid holidays, and participation in several county and state staff-support programs.

In the year to come we are increasing all of our contributions to the insurance benefits as well as increasing the coverages offered to the staff. In addition, we are going to offer a cafeteria plan of additional coverages for the first time. We have contracted to offer flex spending accounts for all that are interested. Finally, we are
increasing our pay range for all positions at the new campus. Again, these are things that we are very proud of and we hope that these changes let our staff know that they are very important and beloved.

Having all of these things in place truly means that we have very little turn over in the staff and when we have an opening we tend to have dozens of applicants to choose from. When we post a job, we include a series of essay questions that we ask candidates to complete and submit along with their applications. We review answers as well as resumes at length before inviting anyone to visit the school. The candidate sees each of us and Mary for interviews on their first visit. If we all agree that we would like to see the candidate again we next have them complete a four hour meet and greet with the children in Mary's classroom. We then meet again to discuss the candidate. If we are still interested at that point we invite the candidate to return again for an eight hour in-class interview in the open classroom.

We have had candidates get all the way to that point who we have not
hired.

If at that point we are still confident in the candidate we offer a provisional offer of employment. We have them review our policies and complete their background and health paper work and hire them only after we have received those clearances AND supervised them in the classroom for 90 days. It is a LONG interview process. The reason is that we want to not only be sure that the person is right for us, but we want the candidate to be sure that we are right for them as well. This process is long but well worth the effort as the result is an incredibly cohesive group who truly enjoy working with children and with each other in our school.