Beating the Bell: Navigating Your School Facilities Project on a Tight Timeline
By SSP Architects
It’s the first day of the new school year, and your school has opened to staff and students once again. The finish line is behind you, and your school facilities project was either completed on time, or it’s lingering into the school year. With only a limited amount of time between the last day in June and the new school year starting back up, how can you give yourself the best chance of getting everything done? And how can your school facilities project get done while you also have summer school, camps, maintenance work, and summer cleaning, all happening at the same time?
Early Planning is Key
The reality is that you need to start planning early, sometimes a year in advance. It is vital to identify any long lead time items, plan for scheduling conflicts within the building, and understand the raw construction durations needed to complete your project.
Armed with this knowledge, your design team can identify strategies to overcome these challenges. Early bid packages, pre-purchase and/or co-op purchasing, and alternative timeline development are all options that can be effective in planning out your project timelines.
When Middlesex County Magnet Schools identified the need to renovate six science labs at their East Brunswick campus, we worked to split the project into manageable pieces (which also helped fit the work into their budget cycles), and guided the district through the pre-purchase of the science casework. Ultimately this allowed for a compression of the construction schedule and the delivery of the labs on time and within their allocated budgets.
Dealing with Longer Projects
However, there may be projects that simply can’t get done over the summer break due to the amount or type of work involved. Understanding the impact and making early plans helps your entire team focus on mitigating the impact. And for even lengthier projects, splitting the work over multiple summers can help alleviate the pain. SSP’s work to renovate the Instructional Media Center at Hunterdon Central Regional High School was split into two (two bid packages, two contractors, two summers) in order to ensure that their space was never fully taken off-line.
For any project where work must either start before school is out for the year in June, or continue into September, early coordination with the on-site administration is absolutely critical. It is important to design the work so that any portions outside of the core work area (ie, utility connections) can be completed during the summer. And having an understanding of what to expect is key, from coordinating contractor access to minimizing noise and disruption, to making sure that there is sufficient alternative space for any displaced classes.
Extending the construction schedule can usually only be a successful alternative if planning is done early, and all stakeholders have agreed to the plan. Moving classes for two weeks because a project unexpectedly ran long is a very different scenario than knowing from months beforehand that a space won’t be turned over until late September.
Time is Fixed
While you may be able to slightly extend your summer break to accommodate a particularly invasive project, the reality is that time is a fixed asset; there are only so many hours in a day, and only so many days in your summer break. So ultimately one of the biggest challenges presented for school facilities projects is how to get the work done with as minimal disruption as possible, all before that first school bus rolls in. And there’s no better way to overcome that challenge than with early planning and communication of expectations.
Helping you Stay Ahead of the Bell
Every successful school project begins with the right expertise. At SSP Architects, our skilled team of school architects provide thoughtful design and careful planning to all PK-12 and Higher Education spaces. With our guidance, you can expect the timeline of your school facility project to be adhered to and completed before the first bell rings. Reach out today if your team needs help navigating a school facility project.