CU-Boulder Today sat down with Senior Vice Chancellor and CFO Kelly Fox to discuss the campus’s request to the Board of Regents for a final $6.3 million in additional funding needed to complete renovations and expansions of Folsom Field, which was approved today. The total final cost of the project is $166.2 million, $24 million over the original cost of $142.2 million.
What contributed the $24 million in cost over-runs for the athletics project?
We had our version of “the perfect storm” – we had a complex project that ended being more complex on the ground that it was on blueprints. And when I say ground, I literally mean that the soils proved to be more of a challenge than anticipated. We also had a compressed timeline – about a year to complete an eight-phase project, and we underestimated how hard that would be. Most importantly, we began all this work at a time when labor and material costs were exploding, and a huge amount of specialized labor has been needed for the project.
Will paying for all this adversely impact students or academic budgets?
No. We are actively fund-raising to pay for a large portion of the project, and Athletics revenues will pay for the bond payments. So it will not impact our academic operating budgets or student tuition.
A lot of faculty, staff and students wonder why the priority for spending was placed on this project at this time. How would you respond to that?
It’s important to remember that over the last decade or so, we’ve done about $1 billion in capital construction to serve the academic and student life missions. This was a unique project in all the factors I described a moment ago. It was not managed as it should have been, and we know that, and we have strategies for improving that process moving ahead.
As for priorities, this facility was in serious need of repair – some sections of the stadium were beginning to slide toward the creek for instance – and we are in a top level athletic conference. We did not even have locker rooms for visiting teams, but had to kick the women athletes out of their lockers for those games. We now have something we can be proud of in a competitive conference.
I should also note that these facilities house the CU Sports Medicine and Performance Center, which is both a research and a treatment facility. And, the costs here include a next-generation recycling center which will assure CU-Boulder’s position as a leader in sustainability generally and in sustainability in intercollegiate athletics specifically. The facilities now provide space for community functions, conferences and even concerts.
How will you change processes moving ahead?
Steps taken thus far after a full review of our processes by consulting group McKinsey & Company include:
- We have hired new Vice Chancellor for Infrastructure & Safety and are just finalizing his start date and will announce his appointment shortly
- We initiated new Project Management training in January 2016
- The first stage gate (a new process for controlling projects through major stages) for development projects began in December 2015
- Development of a contract management toolkit was initiated in December 2015
- Dashboards are being developed – initial review expected end of February 2016
We’re confident that we are moving forward with a suite of tools that will provide active management of construction and planning on our campus. Combined with our Space Utilization Optimization initiative, we are making sure we are fully utilizing our current space.
