Working Around Ongoing Operations

It’s late September and school is back in full swing. You can hear kids in the hallways, smell lunch cooking in the cafeteria and see the line of school buses stacking up for afternoon pickup but there is something else taking place on campus – construction. How do you keep the project on schedule, the kids focused on their education and everyone safe around all the construction activities?

Having built schools for 25 years, we have learned a thing or two about working around ongoing operations.

Whenever possible, separate school activities from construction zones. This extends to vehicular traffic as well. As contractors, we know how to manage what happens within the limits of the construction site, but it is the comprehensive attention to all details around the project that really ensures safety on active campuses.
Share your school testing schedule and school event schedules with your design and construction team so they can plan around them.
Communicate the construction project and activities early and often with the staff at the school and with parents.
Abide by the safety signage on and around campus.
Integrate any existing safety protocols such as badging and building access into the construction process.

Successfully planned and executed projects can not only enhance the facility but can have a positive impact on education, as well as, giving students an opportunity to participate in the construction process. An interactive construction program can take many different forms from simple student tours of the construction site, to having our construction professionals teach in the classroom, to involving students in the design process. Bottom line, if a school sees value in the educational opportunities that construction projects present, we will come up with creative ways to facilitate the process and support that initiative. These types of relationships energize us because it makes what we do far more meaningful.

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