On July 4, 2019, significant rainfall in the late afternoon led to the partial collapse of the roof in the future CAM P-TECH Academy building that’s currently under construction. Thank you to the local fire department volunteers who came to ensure that the site was safe and secure, including notification to me and the full shut off of the gas and electric. I’m also grateful to the network we have as local school administrators so that Pioneer principal Mark Schultz first notified me via Twitter. The best news of the event is that it occurred on the July 4th holiday and therefore no one was in the building, ensuring that we had no injuries.
I am lucky to have Director of Facilities Dave Seiflein and School Business Administrator Maureen Lee on our leadership team. Both immediately drove to the District to attend to the problem, as I was out of town in Pennsylvania.
This morning, I met with our architect from Gordon Jones, Jeff Nunn, and our construction management firm, Campus Construction Management, to assess the damage and to begin to develop a plan moving forward. CEO Mike Shevlin of Concept Construction Corporation, our general contractor on the job, was on site last night and focused immediately on our next steps to repair the roof and keep the construction project moving forward. The roof on the old District Office building was new and repairing this roof and remediating this problem will not be done at school district or taxpayer expense.
We have a tight timeline with a need to open the Academy for students and staff in September 2020. I am confident that our team, under the watchful eye of Campus Construction Management Group, will work hard to get us there. A special thank you to local district resident and Campus Field Manager Michael Perkins for rushing to the work site yesterday afternoon and to Campus Vice President Kevin Donaghue for joining us this morning to manage this problem. As a school superintendent, I wouldn’t consider working through a capital project without Campus Construction Management.