Los Angeles Builds

Guy Mehula, PE, is the deputy chief facilities executive of new construction for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). In this position, Mr. Mehula heads an aggressive new school construction program, with the ultimate goal of providing a K-12 neighborhood seat, on a two-semester calendar, for every student in the district. The LAUSD has 647 schools and almost 747,000 students. The entire $7 billion construction program is designed to address overcrowding, school shortages, and long bus rides some students endure to attend school. Construction of 159 new schools, additions, and playground expansions are already underway. Planning has started for another 50 projects and voters will face a third bond measure for another 40,000 school seats March 9. Mr. Mehula holds a bachelors degree in systems engineering from the United States Naval Academy and a masters degree in civil engineering from the University of Florida. I was able to meet with Mr. Mehula at the K-12 Craig Michaels Facilities Summit in Tampa, Fla., in November, where Mr. Mehula was a keynote speaker.

Hava Leisner: Tell me about your program.

Guy Mehula: Our facilities program is broken into two parts. I am responsible for the new construction. I have a counterpart who is responsible for the modernizations, and the maintenance and operations side of the house. So on my side of the house, we have approximately two phases of the program. Phase I is $3.65 billion and that is 159 projects of new construction, new schools, additions, or playground additions.

HL: Would new schools include replacement schools?

GM: We don’t have any replacement schools. We need so much square feet that everything we do is additional capacity. In order to get the school district back to a traditional two-semester calendar operation it would take 200,000 new school seats. Our program right now in phase I will build about 78,000. In phase II we will build another 35,000, and we are just about to get approval for phase III, the next bond.

This will be our local bond, and it will be matched, hopefully, with state money. Our local bond would be looking to do another 40,000 seats, approximately, of new construction as well as modernizations and a couple of other projects.

The upcoming local bond will be about $3.8 billion and we will be looking to match that with as much state matching as the project would warrant. So even with phase III we would still be 50,000 seats short of being able to get everybody back to a traditional two-semester calendar. Hopefully, when we finish phase II of the new construction we will at least be able to stop busing the kids out of their neighborhood, because there are no school seats for them in their neighborhood.

Right now we bus 16,000 kids a day out of their neighborhood. The ride can be an hour to an hour-and-a-half and then an hour to an hour-and-a-half bus ride home everyday. At the end of Phase II we shouldn’t have to do that anymore.

HL: Is there any particular part of L.A. from which kids are bused an hour or more from their homes?

GM: There are several areas, but the central part of L.A. is probably the densest and certainly the biggest challenge to find land.

HL: So, you are not responsible for the renovations?

GM: No. On the renovations side, they have about 12,000 modernization projects with about 10,000 of those complete. They are finishing up the last 2,000.

HL: For the new schools, what types of design models are you implementing?

GM: Our designs are unique in just about every case and that is because of the neighborhoods they serve and the ability to get land in those neighborhoods. We have really taken on a premise that we want to build centers of the community. So we want to build a school that fits in that community and fits those needs, and is available to the community in a joint-use fashion. And a lot of our sites are unique. As you look around Los Angeles there is not a whole lot of empty land.

HL: You are not working with prototypes, in the traditional sense?

GM: No.

HL: Are there certain elements that you try to implement within each design, such as the use of green areas or artificial turf to support the playgrounds?

GM: One of the things we did was adopt tips from the Collaborative for High Performance Schools, a derivative of LEED, and that gives you several design criteria in order to make a sustainable design, joint-use open space. As we look to make sure we can get as many schools as we can, we want to make sure that they do provide playgrounds and open space.

HL: Are a lot of new playgrounds needed?

GM: We put in about 248 acres of open space with phase I and we are adding two Los Angeles community parks. So we put in a lot of open space.

HL: Is additional open space needed at all levels or mainly at the elementary schools?

GM: It is at all levels. Both of our construction programs are almost evenly split between elementary, middle, and high schools.

HL: As an urban district, what have been some of your more innovative measures?

GM: Our phase II schools are the ones we are really just in the process of getting started. On phase I we have 95 percent of the land bought, 95 percent of the designs complete, and 57 of those school projects are now underway, and 17 of them are completed. We will have the majority of those under contract in the next six months.

In Phase II we are just starting, at the very beginning, so now we are in the process of finding exactly which projects we’ll take to the school board for approval. That will mean a middle school, a high school, a K-8, a grades 6-12, whatever the thing is that fits that community, to solve the school need; we’ll take those for approval. Then by summer, we’ll hopefully find sites available to support those. We’ll know what areas they need to be in. We will go out and locate the alternative for sites and then our goal is to bring those to the school board for approval. At that point we will really get into the design of the schools.

One of the things I really want to do this time is to make sure that we’re designing schools and approaching the classroom with the end in mind. So if we know it would make sense to bid these schools together then we’ll design them with the same architect. It could be all the elementaries, or it could be all the schools in a certain area so the contractor would be in the same geographic area. So we’ll look at some sort of construction strategy and we’ll make sure we have the design to support that.

HL: And right now you have year-round school?

GM: That is correct. We have year-round school. Not in all the schools, but in a good percentage.
By the end of phase II we hope to have all the kids where they don’t have to be bused out of their neighborhood. The schools will still be year-round. We have some schools that run on a 163-day calendar. Where they have three phases during the year.

HL: How do you address additions?

GM: Well, one of the things that we do, for example in our phase II or phase III, is we look to see if there is enough land on an existing school campus to build an addition that makes sense for the amount of additional kids in that neighborhood. Not every school has that available land, because over the years we have put so many portables on different campuses.

HL: Do you shuffle portables around?

GM: At this point not really because the need is so dramatic that once they get there, they stay for a while.

HL: What are some of the biggest challenges you face in building for the nation’s second largest school district?

GM: One of the biggest challenges we have right now, with this very large program, is making sure that we have enough contractors willing to do the work. The Los Angeles school district hasn’t had the best reputation with contractors over the years, and we’ve worked really hard over the last two years to rebuild that confidence. And the promise that we make to the contractors is that we’ll pay you on time, have a professional team who will deal with you fairly, and work to get the school built.

HL: Do you favor any one delivery system?

GM: The majority of our work, based on the California code, is traditional design-bid-build. We do have a handful of projects, using education code 17406, which is known as the lease lease-back. And we see that as very important. We own the land, we have a design completed, and we go out on a competitive basis to developers and they give us proposals. We can evaluate those proposals based on criteria, best value criteria, so, for example, three of the things included in that are their cost, their lease, their timeline. We try to use small businesses, local businesses.

HL: How are your schools in terms of seismic requirements?

GM: All of the schools have to be seismically safe in accordance with the Field Act. And all of the schools are reviewed not only by our architects and our staff, but also by the state architects. The DSA approves it.

HL: In what kind of shape are the district’s facilities?

GM: The facilities we have average 50 to 60 years old. For the bond that will go before voters in March [a $3.87 billion bond on the March 9 ballot] a little over half of it is probably going to be devoted to modernizations. The bond is split about 50-50, modernizations and new construction.

HL: How is the district incorporating conservation into new schools?

GM: The program has conservation in there. But it is devoted toward making the best learning environment you can. For example, daylighting is one of the biggest factors that helps kids learn. That is important. And sound. To hear what the teacher is trying to teach. Things like that are built in.

HL: What from your background of 25 years in construction with the U.S. Navy has proven helpful in your new undertaking at the LAUSD?

GM: My Navy career is very, very similar to what we are doing here. It is working with contractors in a public sector environment to build buildings or maintain buildings. And it is the same thing we did in the Navy. It is an exciting program.