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School Gets Fresh Start as Major Project Breaks Ground in Nation’s Capitol

GAITHERSBURG, Md. — The project team recently broke ground on the $124 million Ballou Senior High School project in Washington, D.C., which will replace the original 1950s school building.

The project is a joint venture between Washington, D.C.-based Chiaramonte Construction and Gaithersburg-based HESS Construction. The team was selected by the Department of General Services as the design-builder for the new facility. The project is being designed by Bowie Gridley Architects and PGN Architects, both based in Washington, D.C., as well as San Francisco-based Perkins + Will.

Located on a 16.5-acre site and covering 350,000 square feet of space, the project will include a three-story design with over 90 classrooms. The expansive project is also seeking LEED Gold certification upon completion.

The school serves students grades 9-12 in a neighborhood in southeastern Washington, D.C., which has a reputation of high crime, drugs and violence. Recognizing this, the design team approached the project with the students in mind and wanted to provide them a fresh, new building for a clean start. The design will include X-ray machines at the school’s entrances in order to help create and monitor a safe environment for students who come from the economically disadvantaged community.

The school will feature high-performance glazing, enhanced lighting controls and the use of materials that emit lower volatile organic compounds, according to HESS Construction.

The project has been running smoothly, according to HESS, although there were some early issues that resulted in increased construction in order to alleviate the problem. There were unsuitable soils underneath the building pad that caused the construction team to incorporate caissons into the foundation design in order to overcome the issue, according to Todd Ward, vice president of educational facilities and services for HESS.

Students were told about the new school when architects visited the school on May 10, 2012 and gave the students details about the project. Since then, students, staff and the community have been anxiously awaiting the school’s completion, scheduled for 2015.

Eye-Catching Interiors
• Fine arts center
• State-of-the-art auditorium
• Two-story cafeteria
• More than 90 classrooms
• 13 science and biotechnology labs
• Multiple computer labs
• Exhibition-style teaching kitchen
• Auto-tech lab
• Group learning spaces
• Spacious courtyard
• Library
• Band room
• Media production studio
• Parent resource center
• Childcare center
• Health/dental center
• Athletic wing with indoor track, pool, gym, classrooms and fitness center

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Cree Luminaires Installed at Washington State Elementary School

EVERETT, Wash. — Monroe Elementary School in installed nearly 450 LED fixtures by Cree Inc., becoming the first predominately LED-lit school in the Everett Public Schools district. The company’s luminaires light the newly rebuilt two-story, 68,000-square-foot, grades K-5 elementary school, which serves about 600 students.

The Cree fixtures met all of our requirements for high-quality lighting and cost savings, said Harold Beumel, director of facilities and planning, Everett Public Schools. He added that since the lights are designed for 50,000 hours of life, the school should see ongoing operational savings due to decreased energy consumption and decreased maintenance compared to linear fluorescents.

He anticipates a reduction in maintenance costs and interruptions to the students’ learning environment, since there would be no on-going need to change ballasts or lamps.

According to Beumel, the district plans for an all-LED school to be completed in fall 2012. View Ridge Elementary School plans to install Cree CR24 troffers, which provide higher-quality light, longer life and greater energy savings than comparable fluorescent options, delivering beautifully lit classrooms for years to come.

"Proper illumination is essential for academic settings," said Al Safarikas, marketing director, Cree lighting. "Not only do the students get to work under much higher quality light than the previous fluorescent fixtures, but schools can also save significantly on maintenance and energy costs, allowing administrators to invest in other academic priorities."

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Washington Schools Wait on State Funding

LAUREL, Wash. — Construction of the new greenhouse at Meridian High School — the first phase of rebuilding the campus — has begun, with much of the project slated to begin in early 2011.

Last February, Meridian School District voters approved a $17 million bond measure to rebuild much of the Meridian High School campus and renovate and expand Irene Reither Primary School. Zervas Architect Group designed the plans for the high school’s rebuild, which are currently being reviewed. The Meridian School Board also wants to use Zervas to design the renovation plans for Irene Reither Primary.

The majority of the high school project will go out for construction bids in February and will be built in phases to accommodate ongoing classes. The project will be complete by the end of 2013.

However, in order for Meridian to finish both projects it will need state funding. Funding depends on how necessary a construction project is compared to others in the state. With the current state deficit, fewer projects will be funded over the next few years.

When Meridian began planning the $17 million high school rebuild, the state was expected to reimburse $12.6 million in July 2011, but that funding is now in doubt,

The district has enough money to pay almost all of the high school’s rebuild costs but will need state funds to renovate the primary school. That project has already been deemed eligible to receive state funding in the New Year and will likely go out to bid in 2012.

The Meridian School Board also submitted a proposal to renovate and rebuild Meridian Middle School. That project is dependent on the high school and primary school receiving state matching funds. District officials expect to learn this month whether the middle school is eligible for state funding.

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LEED Gold Surprise

The remodeled Dean Hall at Central Washington University was the recipient of LEED Gold certification after university officials only expected LEED Silver.

ELLENSBURG, Wash. — The U.S. Green Building Council has awarded Central Washington University’s Dean Hall LEED Gold certification, a surprise for planners who planned to meet LEED Silver standards, according to CWU officials.

Joanne Hillemann, manager of facilities planning and construction at CWU, said the award was an exciting surprise for a building that was remodeled in 2008 to meet silver certification standards. Dean Hall was CWU’s primary science building until 1998, when the university closed the facility due to contamination of building systems by asbestos and heavy metals.

“The gold award actually exceeds our ‘green’ expectations,” said Hillemann, who is LEED-accredited. “The overall energy efficiency of the building saves money on energy bills and models the university’s commitment to building an environmentally sustainable campus.”

This was the first such application for LEED certification of a CWU building, Hilleman said. It was earned based on a variety of green design and construction features, including:

Energy-efficient lighting, occupancy sensors and room thermostats networked into the campus-wide energy management system;

Water-conserving plumbing fixtures, expected to save more than 140,000 gallons annually;

Landscaping with native and adaptive drought-tolerant plants;

Use of local and regional materials, such as brick, wallboard and acoustical ceiling tiles, and recycled materials, including carpeting, steel and metal decking.

Additionally, 2,100 tons of construction debris was diverted from the landfill through recycling.

Hillemann said that a post-occupancy survey of Dean Hall showed that the vast majority of its occupants were satisfied with and comfortable in the renovated structure, which earned the university an extra LEED point.

“We also received an innovation and design credit for environmentally friendly housekeeping procedures now used throughout the building,” she said, adding that hazardous chemicals are not used to clean the building.

The $23.2 million renovation of the 40-year-old Dean Hall, named for CWU Chemistry professor Dorothy Dean, was completed in 2008. The project architect and LEED consultant was BCRA, based in Tacoma. The general contractor was Lydig Construction Inc., of Spokane.

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Lake Washington District Plans Sustainable School

KIRKLAND, Wash. — Lake Washington School District’s newly designed replacement for Finn Hill Junior High School aims to become the district’s most sustainable school as well.

The $38 million, 108,000-square-foot, single-story school will include a variety of features that will reduce operating costs and lessen the building’s impact on the environment, including high performance glazing on windows, natural lighting, and solar panels. Rainwater catchments, native landscaping and dual-flush toilets will also reduce the building’s energy usage.

Construction on Finn Hill JHS is expected to begin this summer, with completion scheduled for September 2011. When finished, the building will be home to approximately 750 students. New baseball and football/soccer fields and tennis courts will be built on the site of the existing school.

Finn Hill JHS will house a wing of five learning clusters, each containing four classrooms, a science room and a shared learning space. The shared learning spaces will open onto smaller courtyards designed to separate each of the clusters. On the north end, a gymnasium, kitchen and commons area will be located. A library, media center and administrative offices will form the southern side of the facility while the school’s west wing will house space for drama, art, music, technology design and consumer/family classes.

Interest in building a sustainable building was heightened by the presence of the Environmental and Adventure School, a district-wide school-within-a-school program that’s organized at the current Finn Hill JHS.

Seattle-based Mahlum Architects is working on the project with general contractor Babbit Neuman Construction Co. of Steilacoom, Wash., and global engineering firm, Arup, designer of the Sydney Opera House.

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Green School Upgrades

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Twenty-seven school districts statewide received a portion of $27.8 million in state funding from the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction’s most recent round of energy efficient project grants.

The funds, which come from a $100 million Washington State Legislature appropriation set aside earlier this year for energy saving projects at K-12 public schools and higher education institutions, will be used for upgrades to HVACs, lighting, building envelops, and other systems.

The OSPI, which has awarded public K-12 school districts more than $42 million in the first two rounds of this competitive grant program, is responsible for half of the state appropriation. The state’s Department of Commerce will administer the remaining $50 million to K-12 public schools and colleges and universities.

The major differences between the two programs is the OSPI grants target K-12 schools and require performance-based contracting, or a construction firm that guarantees a maximum building cost and a minimum energy savings, says Patricia Jatczak, a program development manager at OSPI.

Dan Aarthun, manager of capital programs for Washington’s Department of Commerce, says the grants administrated by his department focus on K-12 and higher ed projects that use both performance-based and non-performance-based contracting, as long as the firms follow building guidelines set out by the state’s Department of General Administration. Additionally, the commerce department sets aside five percent of the grant monies per round for small school districts (those with 1,000 students or less). Having allocated some $16.6 million for energy projects in the first round, the commerce department will announce winners in the second round the first week of October, says Aarthun.

School districts conducted energy audits of their facilities to identify sustainable projects in order to qualify for the funds. The school districts receiving these funds will augment them with local dollars.

Construction will begin this fall for the majority of the projects funded by the OSPI’s second round. At the Lake Washington School District, located in King County, $1.9 million received will support upgrades to HVAC and lighting systems. In the Issaquah School District, also based in King County, $1.3 million of grant monies will go toward HVAC, lighting, and water conservation projects.

“This second set of grant awards continues to reach out to all areas of the state and will result in more than $73 million in construction,” says Washington’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn.

School districts participating in the second round of funding estimate $3.1 million in utility incentives for their projects.

The deadline to participate in the OSPI’s third round of grants, estimated at about $7.5 million, is Oct. 22, 2010.

In 2009, the OSPI distributed $16.9 million to 60 districts in 24 counties as part of a similar project called the Energy Efficiency Grant Program.

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Sidwell Green Roof

WASHINGTON — The Furbish Co., a provider of sustainable roofs based in Baltimore, recently completed the design and installation of a 7,850-square-foot living roof at the private Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C.

The project involved replanting of the original roof on the middle school building, where the plants had not adapted well to the more extreme conditions of a rooftop. When the decision was made to replant the roof, officials at Sidwell Friends commissioned Furbish, which then removed the soil from the middle school roof and replaced it with a special soil blend meant to enhance plant growth and drainage within a rooftop environment. Regional plants, like sedges and sedums, were replanted by hand at one-foot centers, allowing room for growth.

Crews also mounded up areas of deeper soil in several locations to better hold perennial accent plants, such as native grasses and spread cuttings randomly across the soil to fill in gaps between plugs. These half-inch long pieces of material will eventually root and create a green carpet.

Furbish will maintain the roof over a two-year contractual period.

Sidwell Friends Middle School, founded by Quakers in 1883, was the first K-12 school in the United States to earn LEED Platinum certification, as the school did in 2007.

The refurbished roof will provide an educational laboratory for its students to learn about the issues surrounding water reuse and conservation. Science teachers plan to use the roof for hands-on learning and research. The green roof will also reduce urban heat island effect and filter rainwater.

Learn more about Furbish Company’s living roofs and walls at www.furbishco.com.

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Green Science: LEED Gold Research Facilities

RICHLAND, Wash. — Two new additions to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Richland campus earned LEED Gold certification from the USGBC.

Unique in that they are among the few LEED-certified laboratories, the PNNL facilities are estimated to achieve a 77 percent efficiency of net-to-gross square footage versus typical laboratories that are generally designed for 50 percent efficiency.

PNNL’s Biological Sciences Facility and its Computational Sciences Facility, which are connected by a glass atrium and commons areas, cost $77 million to finance and build. Approximately 300 PNNL employees began working in the combined 150,000-square-foot buildings when they opened last fall.

In constructing the BSF and CSF, general contractor D.E. Harvey Builders of Houston diverted 78 percent of waste from landfills. KMD Architects of San Francisco designed the labs to reduce energy and water use by 30 to 35 percent compared to similar-sized buildings. The facilities use waste heat produced by computer servers in the CSF to warm offices and labs. Low-flow and motion sensor-activated water fixtures cut water usage.

To meet the research needs of PNNL scientists, each facility is equipped with cutting-edge technology.

The CSF is home to the Center for Adaptive Supercomputing Software and a 10,000-square-foot raised computer floor space that allows researchers to develop next-generation high-performance computing tools. The two buildings support research for the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Institutes of Health and other organizations.

"These buildings represent the future of the laboratory – providing us advanced equipment and tools needed to have an even greater impact," says PNNL director Mike Kluse. "We have some great scientists, and these facilities will provide them the equipment and tools they need to advance science and deliver science-based solutions."

New York,-based real estate developer Cowperwood Company owns the buildings, leasing them to PNNL’s management company Battelle.

Also in development at PNNL’s Richland campus is a $224 million, 200,000-square-foot Physical Sciences Facility slated for completion this year. When completed, the PSF will house about 450 staffers working in the radiation detection, materials science and technology and ultra-trace fields of research.

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Survey Indicates Wash. Green Jobs Are on the Rise

OLYMPIA, Wash. – A survey produced by the state’s Employment Security Department identified 99,319 green jobs in Washington in 2009, about 3.3 percent of the state’s work force.

The survey, released in March, suggests green jobs grew by 33 percent, or 15,100 positions, for companies that were surveyed in 2008 and again in 2009.

“If Washington can see this kind of shift to green jobs during a recession, just think what will happen as our economy recovers,” says Gov. Chris Gregoire.

More than 13,000 employers responded to the 2009 survey, resulting in a 70 percent response rate. Among the green jobs listed, 76,137 were private-sector positions while 23,182 were public-sector jobs. In the survey, green jobs were described as positions that increased energy efficiency, produce renewable energy, prevent or reduce environmental pollution, or provided mitigation or cleanup of environmental pollution.

Officials caution that a variety of factors can account for the differences between the 2008 and 2009 reports, including the fact that the 2008 survey did not include public-sector positions and that some of the 2009 numbers may have resulted from better awareness of what constitutes a green job. Private sector companies surveyed for the first time in 2009 accounted for another 13,843 green jobs not listed in the 2008 survey. Surveyors caution that these factors may make it difficult to draw solid conclusions.

In 2009, construction jobs accounted for more green jobs than any other industry with 29,410 positions (39 percent), largely in the area of increasing energy efficiency. The agriculture industry ranked second with 12,027 green jobs, mostly in the field of preventing and reducing environmental pollution. The most common green occupation was agricultural workers, followed by electricians, according to the 2009 survey.

Among the 12 statewide workforce development areas outlined by the ESD, the southeastern Benton-Franklin counties region was listed as having the largest amount of green jobs of total workforce in the state at 8.2 percent. The Seattle-King development area had the largest number of green jobs per region overall at 32,857, or 33.1 percent of green jobs, an amount that made up 2.7 percent of that region’s total employment numbers.

“We don’t really have a separate green economy,” says Employment Security Commissioner Karen Lee. “We have an economy that is becoming greener.”

The ESD survey was request by the state Legislature as part of Engrossed Second Substitute House Bill 2227 (E2SHB 2227), which passed in 2009. E2SHB 2227 was created to identify strategic green industries in the state and to train workers in green-economy industries and jobs.

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Voters Pass $4.66 Billion for School Projects

OLYMPIA, Wash. — Voters in Washington recently approved $4.66 billion in maintenance and operations levies for school construction, as well as $507 million in bond issues and $816 million in capital projects.

The ratification of funds is good news for construction companies in Washington during a period when construction spending across the country is at its lowest in seven years.

Washington’s largest school capital levy was passed by the state’s largest district, Seattle Public Schools. Voters there approved a $270 million levy, of which about $140.5 million has been set aside for building improvements, with the remainder going toward technology and academic enhancements.

Nearly $50 million of the levy monies will be used to repair and reopen five elementary schools to meet a growing regional student population. In addition, $27.7 million of the building improvement funds will be used for energy efficiency projects at six schools, $18 million will go toward preventative maintenance, and $15.5 million will fund fire suppression and/or ADA and life-safety improvements.

Three schools in the Seattle Public Schools district will be upgraded with seismic improvements worth $13.2 million, while seven buildings will receive a total of $13.4 million in HVAC system improvements.

Other projects include:

• At the Shoreline School District north of Seattle, voters passed a $150 million bond measure to fund buildings to replace the 50-year-old Shorewood and Shorecrest high schools. The state will supply $35 million in matching funds for the two projects. School officials will seek general construction bids in mid-2011 for both schools. Bassetti Architects of Seattle is designing the Shorewood replacement, while Integrus Architecture of Seattle is providing architectural services for Shorecrest.

• Northshore School District voters approved $149.2 million in bond measure money. Approximately $72 million of the allocated funds will go toward constructing a three-story building with 49 classrooms and a new theater at Woodinville High School. Cornerstone General Contractors of Bothell is the general contractor for the project, while Studio Meng Strazzara of Seattle is the architect.

• At Kenmore Junior High, $25 million of the bond money is being used to construct 16 general education and science classrooms, a replacement kitchen and cafeteria, and music, shop, and technology areas. NAC Architecture of Seattle is doing the design work, and officials plan to open bids for general contracting in spring 2011. The Northshore School District will use the remaining $52 million for districtwide upgrades, ranging from HVAC system improvements to enhancements to track and tennis courts.

• Tacoma Public Schools will receive a $140.4 million capital levy, $51 million of which will be used to replace Baker Middle School and $48 million of which will go toward replacing Hunt Middle School. BLRB Architects of Tacoma is designing Baker, and officials will seek a general contracting bid in June. McGranahan Architects of Tacoma is designing Hunt, with construction starting sometime in summer 2013. A third facility in the district, Washington-Hoyt Elementary School, will receive $25 million in renovations.

• Voters in the Clover Park School District passed a $92 million bond, $38 million of which will be used to build a new Hudtloff Middle School. The state will contribute an additional $10 million to the project. Another $19 million in district bond money, plus $7 million in matching state funds, has been set aside for a new elementary school. In addition, a new $42 million Harris Preparatory Academy will be built to serve grades six through 12. Approximately $7 million in state funds are expected for the Harris Preparatory project.

• The Lake Washing School District and the Cheney School District approved an $83 million capital levy and a $79 million capital construction bond, respectively. Lake Washington will use the money for facilities and technology improvements at the district’s 45 buildings, which will begin in 2011. In Cheney, about $37 million in funds will help replace Cheney Middle School and build a second middle school. NAC Architecture of Seattle will design both projects, and officials hope to go to bid in early March 2011.

• The Bellevue School District and Everett Public Schools will receive capital levy funding. In Bellevue, $74 million from a five-year capital levy will be spent to upgrade and remodel Ringdall Middle School, repair the district’s transportation facility and replace tracks at four high schools, and will be used for other purposes as well. Everett voters set aside $48 million, including $11.2 million for building repairs, infrastructure upgrades and technology enhancements.

Other significant levies statewide that were approved include $38.55 million for Issaquah, $25.26 million for Olympia and $24.5 million for Mercer Island.

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