D65 Meet the Candidate: Randy Steckman
Post 6/11 in a 10 day series on District 65 Candidates for Office
This is a post in a series that will run from March 7 to March 17th where I’ve given District 65 Board Candidates the option to post whatever they want on the blog. I gave them no limitations, except to follow the standard comment section rules and I do no editing, beyond formatting.
If you have questions for the candidates, please also follow the rules on the comment section.
My name is Randy, and I am a mechanical engineer in the construction industry living and working in Evanston. I have 20 years of engineering experience working with and negotiating with contractors, architects, owners, users, and the public.
I’m not from Evanston and moved around growing up, living in Ohio, California, Montana, Wisconsin, and now Illinois. Professionally, I have lived/worked in India, China, and Mexico City. Everywhere I have lived, I have greatly enjoyed learning different viewpoints, cultures, and values. More about my background is on my website Here.
I moved to the Evanston area because I wanted my daughter to attend, what I had heard, was the extremely good public school system in Evanston. While preparing for my daughter to start kindergarten at Oakton, I immersed myself in learning everything about District 65.
When I learned that the district was building a new $48 million school, had almost $190 million of deferred maintenance, and was in a fiscal crisis, I realized that I was in a position to offer my engineering abilities and budget management experiences to the district. I have decades of experience in the following:
Mechanical engineering design, including designing new schools. I know what good design looks like on print and what it looks like installed in a building.
Prioritizing equipment replacements, determining the order in which to replace equipment. I have created and evaluated numerous spreadsheets that rank equipment and order of replacement. This will be critical in understanding and knowing how to approach and to start chipping away at the hundreds of millions of dollars of deferred maintenance.
Budget management, making sure projects stayed on budget. I know that staying on budget means asking questions at every stage and adopting a “trust but verify” approach to every financial decision.
Negotiation, working as an owner’s representative as well as working for an owner (both sides of the table). I have negotiated with owners, architects, contractors, users, and the public to help move projects forward and achieve common goals.
I believe I have the right experience and abilities to exactly match up with what the District 65 school board needs in this challenging period of time.
I greatly appreciate Tom for allowing access to his platform and for his regular posts about Evanston and D65. Thank you to all the FOIA Gras readers for your time and consideration.
I'm so grateful Randy has stepped up to run for council. We desperately need someone that has engineering and construction experience to guide us through the next 4 years which will consist of schools closures and millions of dollars of deffered maintenance in our existing schools. Someone that is a natural problem solver and can ask the right questions of construction teams to prevent us from spending unnecessasry extra money is critical!
Thanks for running for school board. Can you please share your background and experience with sustainable construction practices and how sustainability will factor into your work if elected?