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In Redmond, a New High School Teaches Everybody about Project Management

Redmond locals call it "Education Hill."

Take Northeast 104th Street up and out of town, and you'll pass Horace Mann Elementary School, Redmond Junior High School and the old Redmond High School, all in a row.

When the new Redmond High School opens next school year, the district's 1,500 high school students will experience nine new brick and component-masonry-unit buildings of fire-protected, steel-braced frame construction, and a campus that looks more like a college than high school. Photo courtesy of McGranahan Architects

Of the three schools, the high school, which was built in the 1960s, is the oldest. It does have a new football stadium, but the rest of the place is overcrowded, outmoded and practically falling apart.

That's why the Lake Washington School District decided it needed a new Redmond High School, and it wanted to build it on the existing 40-acre site without disrupting classes or operations at the existing facility.

District officials selected Kirkland, Wash.-based Strand Hunt Construction Inc. for the $38 million project, and with careful planning and the coordination of more than 150 workers, the firm built the new school north and east of the old one.

The old school will be demolished sometime after the end of the current academic year.

The new school is scheduled to open in September for the start of the 2003-2004 school year. When it opens, the district's 1,500 high school students will experience nine new brick and component-masonry-unit buildings of fire-protected, steel-braced frame construction, and a campus that looks more like a college than high school. The buildings string together in the shape of a horseshoe that creates an outdoor courtyard bounded by the administrative area, library, classrooms and the great hall, which contains the cafeteria and its 27-ft. ceiling.

Strand Hunt project manager Rocky Gerber said the courtyard serves as the heart of the school, and adds an element that embraces students and provides a safe haven throughout the day.

"With all of the bells and whistles they had us put in there, the place will be just about as nice as schools come," he said.

The biggest obstacles to the Redmond project were figuring out where to put the school and scheduling completion of the job.

Tacoma, Wash.-based McGranahan Architects was instrumental in deciding where on the site the school should go. When the project began in 2000, Gerber and McGranahan principal designer Mark Gleason invited community members, students and teachers to come and suggest locations for the new facility.

Lake Washington School District officials were invited, too, and after fielding recommendations from the crowd, they laid down two basic requirements for the job - first, that the existing school stay open while the new school was being built, and second, the new football stadium remain untouched.

McGranahan went to the drawing board and devised a plan to set the new school back from 104th Street, on the northeast corner of the property. This placement, though practical, forced architects to establish a new entrance for the school - a bus loop that eventually will come in off of 104th Street, pass in front of the existing stadium and circle in front of the mouth of the courtyard.

"We made sure that once you got back to the new school, you'd see that it was a real destination," Gleason said. "Before, they had a sprawling school with no real personality. This time, we wanted to give them a place that was identifiable."

Despite the progress, Gerber said scheduling the final phase of construction may be problematic over the next few months. When Strand Hunt bid on the job in 1999, it bid on a contract with three distinct phases, the last of which was scheduled for completion by September.

This original contract calls for the school district to hand over the gym and other portions of the old school in April for demolition. As of late January, district officials were saying they would hold off on this until June.

Before crews can demolish the old school, which should take about a month, they must run it through an asbestos abatement procedure, which can take up to eight weeks. Crews then must lay down utilities, pave new parking lots and sod new ball fields, all of which should take another eight weeks.

Strand Hunt was planning to start some of this work next month, and Gerber said that if the district waits until June to relinquish some buildings, he might have to re-bid a portion of the deal or postpone the opening of the new school until December.

"We're in negotiations with [the district] now about how to figure out the schedule for the final phase," Gerber added. "Trying to find a way to do this that pleases everyone takes time."
Other Pratfalls

There were other smaller stumbling points, as well. While similar projects rarely involve more than 30 subcontractors, this one forced Gerber to use nearly 70, making coordination and communication difficult at times and impossible at worst.

Gerber enlisted the help of superintendent Brian Nupeon to facilitate subcontractor communication. Nupeon said he met daily with almost every subcontractor foreman to chart individual progress.

Nupeon said that when construction was in full-swing a year ago, he was writing 20 letters a day to delinquent subcontractors who hadn't finished their work.

Gerber said the job involved more than $150,000 in change orders, or about 200 changes.

Many of the changes involved structural steel details and drywall expansion joints in corridor ceilings. One particular problem was the placement of multi-density fiberboard paneling in hallways and common spaces. Because the plans didn't outline a specific screw pattern for this material, many of the panels had to be replaced and re-screwed.

"None of us had ever used this stuff before, and it's so delicate that if you make one mistake, you've got to redo the whole wall," Gerber said. "If that's not bad enough, the two manufacturers who sell it sell slightly different colors, so in some cases, we had to refinish stuff that we already had bought."

Perhaps the biggest change order came in the form of a gym floor Lake Washington officials decided in January they wanted to refit with a new series of painted lines, as well as anchors for the poles that support volleyball and badminton nets. The new floor, which requires Strand Hunt to hire a subcontractor to rip up the old floor completely, will cost an additional $30,000 and could take an additional two or three months of construction and refinishing to ensure the floorboards settle safely.

"To put it mildly, the gym floor has been a bit of a disaster," Gerber said. "I understand we have to do what they want us to, but this change could very easily mean the new school opens without a gym."

The new Redmond High School boasts plenty of high-tech amenities. The project incorporates some of the latest advancements in sustainable design, including geothermal heating and cooling with the help of an underground GeoLoop system. BCE Engineers Inc. of Tacoma, Wash., designed the system, which was built by California-based GeoLoop Contractors Inc.

The facility also combines natural ventilation with more traditional HVAC systems in the form of operable windows almost everywhere and employs clerestory windows to maximize the benefits of natural light.

The building uses runoff pools and extensive stormwater management systems to help protect neighboring streams and adhere to city of Redmond regulations, which are notoriously strict.

Inside, Shelton, Wash.-based Arcadia Electric installed high-speed fiber optics in every class and learning space, and Puyallup, Wash.-based Larson Glass handled the huge glass panels that separate the cafeteria from the courtyard around it.

There's also a two-story display case.

"This school has just about everything you could possibly imagine," Gerber said. "When it opens, it will be something else."