Facilities Planning

Preliminary Submissions

We have addressed this issue several times in the past but the project managers strongly feel that it should be clarified again for the benefit of the school districts and their consultants.

PLEASE NOTE: Our office has never completely suspended preliminary submissions. When we became overwhelmed with requests for Building Permits, we made a determination to suspend the "technical review" of preliminaries. This simply meant that we would not have an architect in our office review them for code issues but we would still need them for the project managers to review for educational purposes and eligibility for Building Aid.

Due to an apparent misunderstanding, the situation was soon out of control and we were receiving final submissions for projects involving new space without any preliminary information sent in advance to the project manager.

To emphasize and reiterate: We do require that complete preliminary submissions be sent to the project manager well before the final submission. In fact, we would like the preliminary "as soon as possible" and in any event, at least six months before the final submission is sent. This will allow our office to advise the district of the aidability of the project prior to voter authorization. In addition, the architect or engineer hired by the district cannot begin to work on final plans and specifications until the project has been properly authorized, usually by the voters, so there should be plenty of time to submit preliminary plans, enrollment projections, a Facilities Needs Assessment Summary, and an Instructional Space Review form before those final plans are finished.

If the complete preliminary information required is not received well in advance of the final submission, it will cause an extraordinary delay in getting the final submission into our system for review.

We would like to point out, however, that the project manager has always had the prerogative to waive a preliminary submission. This would be acceptable under certain conditions, such as an extremely small addition (example: one or two classrooms), a simple addition (example: just a gym station), or for an addition not involving any instructional space (example: expanding an auditorium or cafeteria). This waiver can be granted in one of two ways—it can be initiated by the project manager or given by the project manager in response to a request by the district.

Last Updated: May 20, 2009