nm , wrong quote
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Official Construction Update Thread
- Thread starter Darth Snow
- Start date
But Sparkles started it
HCMM needs to focus.
GoBuffs08
Well-Known Member
You are familiar with our kickers?
It's impressive, cool to practice indoors at times. Well they have a great facility now.
What's funny is they had to cancel practice today due to weather.
Not by any fault of the IPF though, CU just closed campus completely.
Not by any fault of the IPF though, CU just closed campus completely.
I only have a light blue tie with dark blue, diagonal stripes. But the damned metal clip broke so I have to use a safety pin.
Denver Post reported that the project is something like $24mm over budget, and all the idots are ripping CU with the typical, "Should be spending theses funds on teachers, classrooms and books, instead of a crappy football team" nonsense. This common, public mentality is why CU will never again be on the same level as other big time programs.
CU officials said the cost overruns resulted from a number of factors, including a short timeline for completion due to athletic schedules, weather issues and high turnover of CU and contractor staff.
"(The project) had a fast-tracked nature," said Kelly Fox, chief financial officer on the Boulder campus. "We really probably should've taken a step back and said 'We could use some outside help managing this project.'"
The campus also faced higher-than-expected costs for subcontracting, specialized labor and materials as the construction market began to heat up. The project turned out to be more complicated than it appeared during the planning process, Fox told the board.
New procedures in place
The campus also found weaknesses in its project negotiation and management process and paid consulting group McKinsey & Company $700,000 last fall to help improve its operations.
To address some of those issues, Fox told the board that the campus instituted project management training in January and created a contract management toolkit in December.
CU is hiring a new vice chancellor for infrastructure and safety and is instituting a "stage gate" construction process based on the consulting group's recommendation.
"You will see us spending more time on the front end defining our capital projects in the future," Fox said. "We'll spend a little bit more money up front to really understand the scope, the design needs and nailing that down before we bring that to you for approval. Throughout the process, then, there will be other checks that were not in place."
Bonds and fundraising
The campus financed the expansion by selling about $150 million in bonds. The athletic department is responsible for the project's cost and will make bond payments using donations and other revenue streams.
Chancellor Phil DiStefano said the athletic department expects to announce soon that it has raised between $85 million and $95 million for the project, though those numbers aren't final.
Through the end of November 2015, when the most recent fundraising update was posted online, the athletic department said it had raised $60 million for the project.
Agreed. Should be fun to watch the media bitch about CSU's new stadium and all the possible/probable issues they will face. Do these people not understand how the real world works?
Actually, I wonder how much heat they'll get from the media, since everyone loves the lammies.
Deleted member 807
Guest
The funding system CU has for athletic capital improvements sucks.
Funding requests have to be approved by Regents, and are a matter of public record. It doesn't matter if no taxpayer dollars are earmarked for construction. Bonds that are paid with donations and ticket revenue by friends of CU football get reviewed as if taxpayer dollars are in play. Elected regents have a bias to approve budgets that are conservatively as low-ball as possible.
RG has to disclose overruns first to elected regents, and then the Elected officials have to deal with blowback from media watchdogs who have a duty report on budget overruns. Any budget overrun is easy to characterize by the press as government waste, even if the overrun doesn't come out of taxpayer pockets.
It's from this reporting that donors and friends learn of overruns, at the exact same time as voters who hold regents accountable for providing oversight that does not include overruns.
Is the "Drive for $105" sufficient to cover the overrun, or do donors now face a Drive for $120? Donors now have questions that aren't covered by the reporter who cares more about being a watchdog for tax payers than a mouthpiece for the Athletic Director.
It's just messy. If RG has a the overrun covered already, we don't know.
One thing for sure, if fans trust RG is the right man to get FB back on track, now is a good time to buy tickets, buy a brick, an/or pledge the support in solidarity with our AD.
This dance doesn't happen to USC or Stanford, and probably not with Oregon where Phil Knight's vision and commitment doesn't result in low ball estimates in the first place.
*Sigh*
Funding requests have to be approved by Regents, and are a matter of public record. It doesn't matter if no taxpayer dollars are earmarked for construction. Bonds that are paid with donations and ticket revenue by friends of CU football get reviewed as if taxpayer dollars are in play. Elected regents have a bias to approve budgets that are conservatively as low-ball as possible.
RG has to disclose overruns first to elected regents, and then the Elected officials have to deal with blowback from media watchdogs who have a duty report on budget overruns. Any budget overrun is easy to characterize by the press as government waste, even if the overrun doesn't come out of taxpayer pockets.
It's from this reporting that donors and friends learn of overruns, at the exact same time as voters who hold regents accountable for providing oversight that does not include overruns.
Is the "Drive for $105" sufficient to cover the overrun, or do donors now face a Drive for $120? Donors now have questions that aren't covered by the reporter who cares more about being a watchdog for tax payers than a mouthpiece for the Athletic Director.
It's just messy. If RG has a the overrun covered already, we don't know.
One thing for sure, if fans trust RG is the right man to get FB back on track, now is a good time to buy tickets, buy a brick, an/or pledge the support in solidarity with our AD.
This dance doesn't happen to USC or Stanford, and probably not with Oregon where Phil Knight's vision and commitment doesn't result in low ball estimates in the first place.
*Sigh*
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I don't understand what kind of contract structure they had. In a design bid build project, material costs, subcontractor costs, etc. should be locked in under the contract. Now, modifications to the contract would have to be negotiated and the contractor could hit you for equipment, labor and materials for those but I don't get it unless there were major changes during construction. I do remember a differing site condition at the beginning foe geotechnical problems. I thought that cost, like, $10 million to $15 million.
Most projects have a 10% contingency fund. So a $15 million overrun wouldn't be out of the ordinary. If that was all eaten up right away from the bat due to the geotechnical problem then, really, the rest of the project didn't run abnormally high. But I'm glad I don't have to stand in a room and explain that to a bunch of muckity mucks.
Most projects have a 10% contingency fund. So a $15 million overrun wouldn't be out of the ordinary. If that was all eaten up right away from the bat due to the geotechnical problem then, really, the rest of the project didn't run abnormally high. But I'm glad I don't have to stand in a room and explain that to a bunch of muckity mucks.
Deleted member 807
Guest
Regent Steve Ludwig, a Democrat with an at-large seat, said he felt he had no choice but to vote for the additional spending authority, but wasn't happy about it.
"I know and I appreciate all the work the campus has done in making sure this doesn't happen again, but $24 million is a lot money," Ludwig said. "It really makes me sick."
Hey Regent Steve Ludwig, do you know what really makes me sick? It's your quote.
I'm sick about how the Colorado voters elected you as regent at a time when the once proud CU football program slipped past mediocrity into embarrassment. It makes me really sick that you are situationally unaware that CU peer college football programs have a ten or fifteen year head start on Colorado in the facilities race because, in part, public officials like yourself get quoted in the papers saying something stupid.
So let me help you out on what a Regent worth his salt might have said.
"I thought the original $150M price tag was too low in the first place. It really makes me sick that we didn't go ahead and address the west side of the stadium at the same time as the Champions Center. The CEC could use some updating, too. I really want to see Colorado get back to where we were in the 90's. I have faith in Rick George and the supporters of CU to get this funding shortfall taken care of through private donations. Since this doesn't directly impact student funding nor taxpayer dollars, there's not really a risk here from a public policy standpoint."
I hope fans of CU remember this quote, Regent Ludwig, next time your name shows up on a ballot. Quotes like yours are part of the problem. Show some leadership.
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SuperiorBuff
Well-Known Member
Are we going to have a regent forum again this election on the site?