By David Archuleta, Executive Director
Dear Educational Retirement Act Plan Participants,
Greetings and well wishes! Fall is officially underway with shorter days, coolers nights and changing colors. As winter approaches I am excited to share several big updates regarding two major projects going on with the Educational Retirement Board (ERB).
New Educational Retirement Board Headquarters
First, ERB is excited to announce the approval of a contract with Enterprise Builders Corporation (EBC) to construct a new 19,443 sq. ft. office headquarters building on the south end of Santa Fe. EBC successfully outbid its competition by clearly demonstrating its expertise in the new office building space construction environment having completed 35 office building projects in the past five years and more than 100 over the last 35 years, totaling over 1 million square feet valued at over $200 million. The new facility will be built in compliance with the latest Energy Efficiency Standards for Public Buildings on the 2.999-acre lot owned by ERB located at 5211 Las Soleras Drive in Santa Fe. This project is expected to take 12 months at a cost of $12.4 million, including gross receipts tax.
This building will allow ERB to consolidate its administrative services, member services, information technology services, investments, and executive leadership teams under one roof beginning January 2025. This project has been in development for more than a decade, as ERB’s human capital requirements have grown beyond its current office space capacity. As a side note, the ERB’s current office headquarters will be sold to the State of New Mexico for use by the Public Regulation Commission and the proceeds will be used to offset the building costs.
Image gallery of building renderings by Dekker, Perich, and Sabatini (DPS) architectural design firm from Albuquerque. June 14, 2023. Select image to enlarge.
Pension Administration System Modernization Project
ERB is also excited to announce the commencement of the multi-year project to modernize its Pension Administration System (PAS). The current system has come to the end of its useful life and will no longer be supported by the current vendor. The PAS serves as the foundation for all of ERB’s business processes by tracking and recording a member’s earnings and service credit over the course of their career, along with calculating and generating benefit payments for more than 54 thousand retirees each month. The success of this project is highly dependent upon the hard work and dedication of ERB’s workforce in partnership with the selected vendor (Telus Health) and the supporting project management and data cleansing services provided by Segal and MBS.
This project is part of a larger Business Process Improvement Project aimed at reducing the number of manual/human interventions and adjustments needed to calculate and generate benefit payments each month. Project goals also include increasing system functionality and applying the latest developments in cyber security protection to safeguard against the constantly evolving and large volume of cyber security threats. Upon implementation, this system will serve more than a generation of active and retired participants.
Sincerely,
David