New Mexico District Uses Gordian Solutions to Complete School Facility Updates

Challenge: School Facility Updates Difficult to Accomplish

Located just outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, Los Lunas Schools educates approximately 8,500 students in its 15 buildings. The facilities, some of which were built as far back as the 1930s, serve Native, Hispanic and at-risk students in Valencia County.

Each spring, the Los Lunas Schools prepares for the upcoming school year. While safety and security are top of mind in any school setting, they were of even greater emphasis in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic raised additional concerns about securing campus access points, decreasing the number of high-touch surfaces and providing good air quality.

Completing the necessary improvements and school facility updates is a tall order. Los Lunas’ internal staff is limited, and the pool of qualified local contractors is only so big, making it difficult to complete projects during summer break and on other tight timelines. This limited access to contractors has created pressure to operate at maximum efficiency. That means issuing as few change orders as possible. Further complicating facilities operations is the district’s funding model. Its facilities and infrastructure projects are funded by the state, via bonds and through Federal stimulus. These sources require accurate and transparent tracking of how those funds are spent.

Between finding contractors to take on projects, operating as efficiently as possible and constant external pressure to account for every dollar spent, the district needs flexible, robust procurement tools to get construction work and school facility updates done while protecting itself from an audit.

Solution: Streamlined IDIQ Procurement from Gordian

Los Lunas Schools uses a variety of construction delivery methods. However, for projects they don’t have the staff and resources to cover, they use Gordian’s ezIQC® solution, a Job Order Contract available via a cooperative purchasing network of which the district is a member. ezIQC, like all Job Order Contracting (JOC) programs, is an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract that allows multiple projects to be complete through a single contract over a fixed time period. With ezIQC, Los Lunas has access to a pool of contractors ready to respond to the district’s needs, assistance from a Gordian construction specialist, transparent cost data for every project and a purpose-built software for collaborating with contractors.

Los Lunas Schools Superintendent Arsenio Romero, the leader charged with creating and maintaining secure, healthy facilities for students and staff, described his experience completing construction projects with Gordian’s ezIQC during a recent webinar.

Romero said, “What I love about working with Gordian is I’ve got a group of people that know the Job Order Contracting process in and out. It allows the pressure to come off me, so I can spend my time on other important aspects of the district. That’s the beauty of this – they are able to find the contractors. They’re able to make sure that we dot our I’s and cross our T’s all the way through this whole process, so when audit time comes around, I feel 100% confident that we’ve done everything correctly. That’s a huge benefit to having a partner like Gordian.”

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Romero and his team accessed ezIQC for a spate of recent school security projects. With multiple entry points providing easy access to students, schools couldn’t monitor visitors safely and effectively. To make their buildings more secure, Los Lunas partnered with Gordian to install security fencing around their schools to limit access and installed sidewalks to help direct visitors to the main entryway. For additional safety, they installed security vestibules with two sets of doors and a designated sign-in area that provides students and staff an added layer of protection. Once a visitor has been temperature screened and identified themselves as an authorized visitor, the doors from the designated sign-in area to the school are electronically unlocked.

Los Lunas Schools’ facility updates included the installation of security fencing and temperature screening stations (top) and building a space for the Student Resource Officer and a visitor check-in window (bottom).

Result: School Facility Updates Completed on Time

As a result of its partnership with Gordian, Los Lunas Schools has dramatically reduced the time it takes to implement its school facility updates and infrastructure improvement projects. Additionally, Arsenio Romero and his team have peace of mind knowing their projects will be completed on time, at a fair price by qualified local contractors. Gordian’s team relieves some of the procurement burdens from the district, so its leaders can focus on providing a safe, high-quality educational experience for their students.

Perhaps Arsenio Romero best explains the results, “If you are a district that’s smaller and does not have that construction staff or whether you’re larger and you have multiple projects going on throughout your district, Gordian has been an excellent partner to help us make sure that we get these done on time, at a high quality, making sure that we use local vendors, and we know exactly what that budget is going to be like so we can prepare for those projects.”