Overview
So, your school has made the decision to build or renovate, but how do you get started on a school construction project?
Rich Harmon, senior vice president for Ziegler, offers the following ten tips for “advancing the agenda from the boardroom to the drawing room to the classroom.”
1. Establish sound board governance
2. Begin early team development
3. Determine capital campaign feasibility
4. Have knowledge of credit profile and spending options
5. Pass reimbursement resolution
6. Have knowledge of Constitutional First Amendment issues
7. Coordinate all-inclusive capitalization approach: funding, fundraising and endowment building
8. Avoid “conflicts of interest” with trustees
9. Avoid financial advisors or loan brokers (middle men)
10. Avoid “one-stop shopping” and tying of bank products
In our annual construction focus, we cover some of the most current topics affecting school construction today. Here are some great “take-aways” from this section.
Creating Smaller Learning Communities
There is an enormous interest and rapid growth in the creation of smaller school environments in the United States, fueled by overwhelming evidence that smaller schools can have a positive influence not only on the social climate of a school, but also the academic achievement of students. The goal is to break down the scale of the school organization into manageable groups of learners to create a natural sense of belonging, connectedness and caring. The school building as a whole should symbolize in physical form the philosophy of smallness, of individual caring, support and concern for the individual learner.
Metamorphosis of School Design
School facilities must evolve as a whole to support new teaching and learning paradigms. Organizational leaders must promote "whole systems" thinking for their institutions to evolve. In schools, whole systems thinking has led to such breakthrough ideas as theme-based instruction, integrated curricula, teaming, public/private partnerships, and the idea that schools are learning organizations whose members continually discover how they can create and change their own reality. These concepts, in turn, have affected the way architects and others conceive of, build and renovate school facilities.
Modular Buildings
Modular construction is an alternative method of building schools and almost any other type of building you can imagine. Modular construction employs factory techniques to improve quality, shorten manufacturing time, and reduce cost. One significant advantage of a modular building is flexibility. A modular building can be designed to be quickly assembled and easily disassembled. For instance, you can reconfigure a modular school to meet changing student numbers, something that is not possible to do with a standard brick-and-mortar facility. In fact, with modular, you can disassemble and move the entire building to another location.
