Progress Report: K-12 Overview

Overall school market expected to stay strong throughout Southeast

By Scott Judy

K-12 school construction remains a strong focus for contractors throughout the region, and for those who do their homework, the results can be rewarding.

That's not to say that every assignment is a cakewalk. Margins can be low, owners demanding, competition fierce and schedules outrageous.

But in Georgia and the Carolinas, this market remains one of the most consistent and strongest overall. For example, McGraw-Hill Construction reported that approximately $2 billion worth of K-12 school contracts were initiated in 2003 in these three states, a figure that has been fairly steady since 1999.

"There's a ton of activity," said Ed Siquiera, senior project manager for Winter Construction Co. of Atlanta. "We can't bid them fast enough, considering how much work there is out there."

Winter Construction is currently building the $27 million Oconee County High School in Bogart, Ga.

While many contractors are looking to fill any gaps in their portfolios resulting from declines in other markets, the firms already doing this work aren't too worried about a lack of opportunity.

"If you look at the population studies and the demographics of the metropolitan counties, the growth in that age group is really going to force the school systems to have to keep up," said Jay Porter, vice president of Evergreen Construction, also in Atlanta. "As long as people keep moving to the area and they keep having kids, and the kids outnumber the schools, that market will still be wide open."

Among the projects Evergreen is currently working on is the $13 million Duluth Senior High School in Duluth, Ga.

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Some Hot Spots

Atlanta is certainly one of the strongest regional areas for K-12 school construction. That's where Skanska USA Building is wrapping up its $55 million Alpharetta High School project in Alpharetta, and where E.R. Mitchell Construction Co. is overseeing the construction of the new $20 million Sandtown Middle School, also in Fulton County.

There, as in other Georgia counties, school construction is funded through SPLOST, or Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, a 1 percent sales tax that runs for five years and is often used exclusively for schools.

"If we didn't have SPLOST, we'd have to have bond referendums or rely on state funding," said, Daniel Sullivan, director of construction for Fulton County Schools.

With SPLOST, "We're building schools at a fairly good clip" throughout metro Atlanta, and some area counties are gaining more than 3,000 students a year, he added. "All of our surrounding counties are growing rapidly. I don't see it dropping off for school construction in the next five years."

Fulton County currently lets most of its projects as construction-management contracts and is seeing plenty of competition for every school it announces.

"Usually we have no fewer than 11 contractors apply as construction managers," Sullivan said.

The backlog of projects and the fierce competition aren't limited to Atlanta. In Charlotte, Bovis Lend Lease is serving as the program manager for a $1 billion Capital Improvements Program for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

This multiyear program, which runs until 2007, includes the construction of 18 new schools, eight replacement schools and 14 substantial-replacement schools, as well as the renovation or expansion of 74 of Charlotte's 148 public schools.

Tony Ansaldo, director of architecture for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, said funding for CMS varies annually but has remained in the $100 million to $200 million range for the past several years.

Statewide, North Carolina has experienced some significant and mostly negative variations recently. In 2001, for example, the value of K-12 school contracts declined by 18 percent. The next year, the market recovered only 2 percent, and then went back down 22 percent in 2003 to a value of roughly $569 million. Contractors can sense this fluctuation in the marketplace.

"North Carolina as a whole has done a good job of providing funds - probably not as much as parents, teachers and contractors would like," said Joel Tucker, senior project engineer for Skanska USA's $18.5 million Ronald Wilson Reagan High School project in Winston-Salem. "I feel like there's money out there. But it seems as though it's been spotty."

Regardless, there are numerous major projects under way currently in North Carolina. Some of the bigger ones include the $24 million Dudley High School that Lyon Construction is building in Greensboro; the $20 million Community House Middle School Sorensen Gross is constructing in Charlotte; and the $17 million Simon G. Atkins Academic and Technology High School in Winston-Salem that New Atlantic Contracting is building.

In South Carolina, the big story is in Greenville County, where that school district is in the middle of its four-year, nearly $800 million program to revamp its 72 schools. Overall, roughly two-thirds of the projects are completely new schools, while one-third are renovations and additions.

It's a nationally unique initiative, with funding coming from bonds sold by a non-profit organization formed especially for this effort known as BEST, or Building Equity Sooner for Tomorrow.

Institutional Resources of Greenville, S.C., the program manager for the effort, proposed the concept several years ago. Upon Greenville County's acceptance of the plan, BEST then sold $860 million worth of bonds to fund school projects. The school district then will use property-tax revenue to pay off the bonds over the next 26 years.

"We've got a lot of work," said Don Buck, CEO of Institutional Resources, adding that the firm has strived to spread the work around. "But we've tried to award it and package it such that all sizes of contractors can bid on the work."

He said packages are put together with ranges varying from $2 million to $5 million, all the way up to $70 million to $100 million. Even so, it appears many projects are going to out-of-town contractors.

"There's not been a lot of local (general contractors) going after projects besides us," said Don Nickell, group vice president with Greenville-based Suitt Construction. "And I'm not quite sure why that is. Most of the firms that have been going after and getting the schools have been from out of town."

Even so, Nickell said the massive effort has been a major boon to the local construction economy.

"Although most of the generals are coming from out of town, the bulk of the subcontractors and the vendors are still in the upstate part of South Carolina," he added. "There is a huge economic impact to them."

Buck said that, to date, the program is on budget and on schedule to conclude in time for the fall 2006 school year. Prototype school designs, bulk purchase of materials and the extensive use of precast concrete have benefited the cost and schedule goals, he added.

Fueling this major initiative in Greenville County - as is the case everywhere - is the obvious need for more and better schools.

"Given the size of the bond issue and just the magnitude of the program, you can imagine the condition that the schools were in prior to this," Nickell said. "$800 million worth of schools - that's a huge number for a county as small as ours. You can imagine the education facility needs that were in the county."

The BEST program will benefit Greenville County long after current needs are met.

"In June 2006 the county will have 70 brand new schools, practically, and a great learning environment and high teacher morale," Buck said. "Those are positive aspects that companies look at when they move to a community. It's going to have a great impact on the economic development of Greenville County overall."

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Alpharetta High School

Cost: $55 million
Location: Alpharetta, Ga.
Owner: Fulton County Schools
Architect: Perkins & Will Architects, Atlanta
Construction Manager: Skanska USA Building, Atlanta
Start Date: August 2002
Completion Date: June 2004
Project Description: This 335,000-sq.-ft. school sits on approximately 77 acres, of which roughly 60 are cleared. The mostly three-story facility consists of a central spine area that includes three classroom wings as well as a separate gym and performance building. The new school will accommodate about 1,800 students.

The bulk of the school was built with a primarily steel structure and masonry façade, though the gym utilized poured-in-place concrete.

Phasing of the project was an important part of achieving the schedule, said Clinton Boyd, senior project manager for Skanska USA Building.

"The school is basically linear and there's a main portion of the building that's essentially the center," he said. "There's a small wing on the south end of the main building that is the special education center for North Fulton County.

"We started in the main part of the building, which houses the kitchen, and some of the career-tech areas that were certainly more complex than the typical classroom wings. From there, work flowed back into that south wing and then we brought up the three house wings simultaneously. They were all running concurrent, and at any one point in time, we had five areas of the building under way."

The project's phasing in this manner demanded much from the subcontractors.

"When we originally bid the job, it was demonstrated to the subs that they had to be working in a minimum of five areas of the building at once," Boyd said. "And each one of those areas would require a full crew."

To accommodate the school's significant athletic facilities - including a football field with stadium seating, football practice field, softball facilities, baseball fields and tennis courts - the design utilized a tiered site that required approximately 200,000 sq. ft. of modular retaining wall.

"There's over 100 ft. of elevation change from the lowest part of the site to where the building sits," Boyd said. He added that the wall is a composite between block wall and earthen palisades wall.

Plateau Excavation handled all of the sitework, and Wall Technologies installed the series of retaining walls.

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Sandtown Middle School

Cost: $20 million
Location: Atlanta
Owner: Fulton County Schools
Architect: Stevens & Wilkinson Stang & Newdow, Atlanta
Construction Manager: E.R. Mitchell Construction Co., Atlanta
Start Date: December 2002
Completion Date: June 2004
Project Description: Sandtown Middle School is the seventh of a new prototype middle school designed for Fulton County Schools.

The design of Stevens & Wilkinson Stang & Newdow is organized around a tandem corridor system that links public zones such as rotundas, cafeteria and common areas with the academic areas. The media center is in the middle of the school, with five instructional wings around it.

The 179,800-sq.-ft. steel-frame structure features a brick veneer exterior and a modified bitumen roof system with arched metal roofs at the gymnasium, cafeteria and media center. The school will include 51 standard classrooms, 12 science labs and 20 special-purpose classrooms.

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Oconee County High School

Cost: $26.8 million
Location: Bogart, Ga.
Owner: Oconee County Board of Education
Architect: FJ Clark Inc., Anderson, S.C.
General Contractor: The Winter Construction Co., Atlanta
Start Date: February 2003
Completion Date: July - November 2004
Project Description: Winter Construction Co. is heading for a July completion of the first phase of this 235,000-sq.-ft. school in Oconee County, Ga. The first phase includes the classrooms, administration, cafeteria and gymnasium.

By November, the contractor expects to wrap work on a full-service fine-arts auditorium facility that will be used by the school and community alike.

Ed Siquiera, senior project manager for Winter Construction Co., said the use of structural steel made the project unique.

"Most schools we deal with are basically masonry construction, but this one was all structural steel, except for the small P.E. building, which was concrete masonry units," he said, adding that the team was able to avoid cost increases related to steel. "We were fortunate. We were able to get the majority of the steel purchased and actually on the site well before that escalation really became an issue.

"We were probably taking the last bits of the fine-arts building - which is the last building on the job - in March of this year, so the majority of the material was already procured."

Contributing to the uniqueness of the facility is the shared-use nature of not only the fine-arts building but other amenities as well, which Siquiera said could be a trend.

"Definitely for this facility they did some things with the intent that it was going to be used for the community and the surrounding area," he said. He added that the school features 11 tennis courts and "the intent is to have a tennis facility that would serve the entire community's needs."

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Lee County High School

Cost: $20 million
Location: Sanford, N.C.
Owner: Lee County Board of Education
Architect: Boney PLLC, Raleigh, N.C.
General Contractor: J.M. Thompson Co., Cary, N.C.
Start Date: November 2003
Completion Date: August 2005
Project Description: This 179,500-sq.-ft. facility will feature one main academic building as well as a football stadium with press box. Claude Medlin, senior project manager for J.M. Thompson, said the construction team divided the main academic building into seven different wings.

Most of the wings are being built one-story high, while two are two stories. The structure consists of a steel frame with masonry walls and brick masonry veneer and some metal panels. Roughly half of the new school's roof is a single-ply membrane flat roof and the other half a sloping metal roof.

Medlin reported recently that the structural steel frame erection was continuing, and no cost impact has been felt by the owner. He said some steel materials such as steel pipe and metal studs were stored at the project well ahead of time, and so there have been only "minor impacts."

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Ronald Wilson Reagan High School

Cost: $18.4 million
Location: Pfafftown, N.C.
Owner: Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools
Architect: Walter Robbs Callahan & Pierce, Winston-Salem, N.C.
General Contractor: Skanska USA Building, Winston-Salem.
Start Date: June 2003
Completion Date: June 2005
Project Description: This 194,200-sq.-ft. facility near Winston-Salem is being built with a concrete masonry frame and brick veneer exterior. The two-story classroom sections include a main building with three additional academic wings.

Joel Tucker, senior project manager for Skanska USA Building, said recently that the project was on schedule.

Like other new schools in the Southeast, this one features its share of athletic amenities. Tucker called the school's stadium "spectacular," and said it will also include a full-size track and baseball and softball fields.

The owner and architect "have done a good job of anticipating future growth," and the facility is ready for future expansion, Tucker added.

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Cherrydale Elementary

Cost: $9.1 million
Location: Greenville, S.C.
Owner: Greenville County School District
Architect: McMillan, Smith & Partners, Spartanburg, S.C.
General Contractor: Suitt Construction Co., Greenville, S.C.
Start Date: August 2003
Completion Date: July 31, 2004
Project Description: This project - one of dozens under way in Greenville County - includes a combination of new academic and administration buildings as well as renovation of the existing gymnasium. Paul Reach, project manager for Suitt Construction, said the new facilities will provide classrooms for kindergarten through fifth grades, science labs and a cafetorium.

Reach said the structure consists of a combination of steel and poured-in-place concrete, with the exterior featuring precast architectural inlay brick panels. Reach added that the schedule of less than one year to complete the project was "extremely aggressive."

Suitt's interaction with the program manager, Institutional Resources, has been positive to date, said Don Nickell, group vice president.

"They have been very pleased with our effort, our project team and the quality of our work," he added. "We've been very satisfied with our dealings with them as well."

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