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School Daze

Sound & Video Contractor - June 1, 2003

Byline: Dan Daley

Contractors working in the education field might be reminded of working with the military. The complex and often Byzantine bidding process that accompanies virtu-ally every school facility A/V installation is pocked with regulatory and systemic potholes. That said, it's like any other bureaucratic encounter, from the motor vehicles department to the military. You must accept that this is how this particular universe works. After learning the language, you can participate in what is an expanding sector of the A/V market.

Distance learning alone is expected to increase A/V spending several tens of millions of dollars during the next decade, according to the U.S. Department of Education. However, even at the local K-12 level, the need for improved sound systems, flat-panel displays, wireless microphone systems, and other technologies can only increase. That is not only a reflection of the evolution of teaching in the digital age but also a bellwether of larger social and economic issues, particularly increasing class sizes.

"You can't underestimate the social and political forces that will be affecting how audio and video are used in the educational system in years to come," says Cliff Dodge, educational sales consultant at A/V systems design and contracting company Alpha Video, in Edina, Minnesota. Dodge is a former special education teacher himself. "The technologies are going to get increasingly sophisticated. One of the biggest areas of growth now is in implementing central video server systems so that teachers no longer have to tape to play back visual materials. But the sound field in classrooms has to be enhanced, as well, and there are some interesting reasons behind that. Aside from better intelligibility enhancing learning, the growing size of classes and classrooms means that it's going to become an OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] issue in the near future. Teachers will begin complaining about losing their voices and developing nodes on their vocal chords, because they have to speak more loudly for longer periods of time."

Dodge says the average class size is 35 students, and he's seen some classes with as many as 50 students in a single room. How much of an issue that will be is underscored by the ongoing defense by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) of its controversial ANSI S12.60-2002 Acoustical Performance Criteria, Design Requirements, and Guidelines for Schools, which adds a classroom acoustics section to the International Building Code. The standard has been criticized as too strict and economically unfeasible. In the fall of 2002, two trade associations representing manufacturers of modular buildings and a small group of school business organizations requested that ANSI withdraw the standard. The ANSI board of standards review refused to withdraw the standard.

"It's a fairly aggressive standard, it has an ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] compliance aspect, and it's something that A/V and acoustical contractors should be aware of," says David Prince, principal consultant at acoustical consulting firm Acoustic Expertise in Villa Park, Illinois. "It requires extremely low noise floors."

THE LOCAL LEVEL

Those are some of the broader strokes. However, as Dodge points out, success in working with educational facilities for most contractors begins at the local level. "You need to be invested in the process, and you have to understand the issues at the school district level," he says.

The bidding process seems straightforward, but each stage has its distinct twists. The first step is identifying a problem or a need. At this point, a consultant will be called in who will be paid to create a specification for addressing the issue but who will not be permitted to bid on it to avoid a conflict of interest. But even at this early stage, contractors can get a foot in the door by helping school districts find problems or make them aware of shortcomings in the district schools' A/V infrastructure.

"In between the initial identification of an issue and the second step, the call to action, there's an opportunity for a contracting company to do itself and the school some good," Dodge says. "You need to be aware that teaching techniques are based on modeling. Schools will find other schools that are addressing things a certain way and will look to them as a model on which to base their solution. Contractors who have experience in dealing with a particular issue can offer previous solutions as models to the school district."

Dodge offers his company's experience at nearby Egan High School, which had a school of technology built in 1989 and found that to avoid being the school of old technology, it had to update its A/V and other systems on an almost annual basis. "We are on the school's technical advisory team," Dodge says. He says his company hosts informal seminars locally and throughout the five-state region in which area schools can compare notes on how they have responded to media needs and to hear about new ways of approaching issues. "This really moves the modeling process along and at the same time positions the contractor as an advisory resource," Dodge says. "You don't create the specification, of course, but you are now part of the team that helps identify problems and solutions. It is a marketing strategy, but it's one focused less on selling and more on information. We're allowing teachers to network in a way they never could before."

The third step in the process is the bid specification itself, which can be the most complicated. Jerry Davis - principal at Jeremiah Associates LLC, a consulting firm in Chandler, Arizona - has done work for all four of Arizona State's sprawling campuses and for Midwestern University. Davis says he tries to steer a bid specification into a design proposal, a rubric he says offers less latitude for interpretation - thus, confusion - by allowing the consultant to add certain criteria such as installation methodologies, beyond just hardware components. It also allows decision makers to look at a larger picture from each bidder instead of simply the lowest price.

"If someone knows they're not going to lose out just because someone bid $50 lower, you're going to get a better class of contractor bidding on projects," Davis says. "To do that, we specify not only the components but also system and contractor performance, as well as how the systems will be tested and evaluated. Proof of that is important, as is proof that a contractor has successfully run complex projects in the past. Project management skills are important and part of the design proposal, something that would be harder to spell out in a simple bid specification."

This step of the process is subdivided into three phases, says Davis. Phase one involves listing all the manufacturers' cut (spec) sheets, a bill of materials, functional diagrams, and an overall game plan for executing the project. Phase two includes shop drawings, point-to-point wiring details, mounting details of any component that will attach to a structural element, panel layouts, and rack elevations. "This is where it gets most specific," Davis says. "We want CAD drawings, not hand scribblings. A university tends to accumulate a large number of systems over time, and documentation is very important." Phase three includes closeout documentation such as operator manuals and part numbers.

Both Davis and Dodge say making the design proposal stage more specific is useful when dealing with educators. As Davis points out, educators are used to layered bureaucracies, so it feels familiar. "It tends to weed out what, in the business, we call trunk slammers - vendors who are looking just to sell components and are not ready or able to offer after-sale support and service," Dodge says.

THE BID ALTERNATE

Once a bid specification or design proposal is complete, it will need to be published, certainly for any public educational institution and often for a private one (if the school's charter or board requires it). This step raises the opportunity for the so-called bid alternate, an opportunity for vendors to offer or suggest alternative parts or design strategies that would meet the basic criteria of the bid proposal but would do so with less expensive components.

"It's a double-edged sword," Dodge says. "We see it in a lot of types of projects and more and more in school projects. The school board might want the Taj Mahal of systems, and someone comes in through the bid alternate route and says you can achieve that for less money and still meet the specs. Sometimes you can, but sometimes it raises the possibility of dealing with trunk slammers."

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