Bay Haven Charter Academy

Owner: Bay Haven Charter Academy, Bay District Schools
Location: Panama City, Fla.
Cost: $11.7 million
Contractor: GAC Contractors, Panama City, Fla.
Architect: JRA Architects, Tallahassee, Fla.

Bay Haven Charter Academy in Panama City, Fla., is located on a 17-acre site donated to the nonprofit organization by St. Joe Co., the state's largest land holder.

The new 120,000-sq.-ft. school features five kindergarten classrooms; 38 other classrooms for the school's mix of elementary and middle-school pupils; four language rooms; three computer labs; art, band and choir rooms; media center; and cafeteria.

That's an improvement over the four-year-old school's previous leased accommodations in a former furniture store.

While the school gladly accepted the donated site, much of it was deemed as wetlands, thus creating permitting and construction challenges.

To overcome this issue, GAC Contractors rescheduled the project in order to begin construction immediately on the portions of the new facility that were not located in the wetlands areas.

The Bay Haven Board of Trustees hired GAC as a construction manager. This was done prior to executing the contract with the designer of record, JRA Architects of Tallahassee.

By contract, the contractor's completion date was set at Dec. 4. However, GAC strove to have the project completed in time for the first day of school, Aug. 4.

By utilizing a seven-day workweek and subcontractors from throughout the Southeast that could commit to the accelerated schedule, the construction team was actually able to obtain a certificate of occupancy by July 15 - five months ahead of the contractual deadline.

Just as important, GAC Contractors reported that the project was completed with zero lost-time accidents.