Suffolk Construction is building several prototype elementary schools for Miami-Dade Public Schools.

Most public school districts share a common goal of providing students with access to education in an environment that is conducive to learning. For Miami-Dade County Public Schools, meeting this goal under pressures from a statewide class size-reduction amendment and a surging student population has required innovative thinking and expertise from architects and contractors capable of carrying out that vision.

As the largest school district in the state of Florida, and the fourth-largest overall in the United States, Miami-Dade County Public Schools is expanding its facilities at a breakneck pace to keep up with its rapid growth.

Based on a five-year capital plan approved by the school board in 2005, the district identified the following objectives: relieve overcrowding, bring existing facilities to a state of good repair and enhance existing facilities as needed to meet student needs.

Superintendent Rudolph Crew has stated that in the 2005-2006 fiscal year, the district awarded more than $1 billion for total projects. In the next five-year cycle, estimated expenditures are expected to exceed $3.4 billion, roughly $2.2 billion of which is slated for new facilities or the replacement of those that are obsolete.  

In November 2002, a state-mandated educational reform was approved to reduce class size limitations in all grades. Under Florida’s class size-reduction program, beginning in fiscal 2003-04, the number of students per classroom needed to be reduced by at least two students annually. By 2010-2011, classrooms need to be limited to 18 students in grades pre-kindergarten through 3; 22 students for grades 4 through 8; and 25 students for grades 9 through 12.

Under the guidelines of the amendment, class size-reductions are to occur gradually over eight years. The reductions will be calculated in stages, and be determined first by district, followed by school, and finally, individual classroom.

To meet the guidelines of the amendment, new capacity is being added in each of Miami-Dade’s nine geographic districts. “In the school board, we have always been playing catch-up,” says Janet Kelly, executive director of school facilities and construction with Miami-Dade’s District Six.

“We have never had enough permanent school sites. Now, with the five-year plan we have in place, and with the population stabilizing, we will basically be caught up with construction needs as far as new student stations, and we can look toward older facilities that need repair or replacement. We have an ambitious schedule for opening schools over the next two years.”

A Better Delivery Process
Tired of the hard-bid process, the district changed its approach to securing contractors for new construction projects in the late 1990s. Using CM at-risk and design/build delivery methods, it was able to locate more-qualified contractors.

“We have been doing design/build for the last 10 years and we are right now doing more CM at-risk projects,” Kelly adds. “We try whatever the market is favorable for.”

Both methods have been successful for the district because they allow for better cost-control, creativity and quality. “We went though a phase where we really wanted to get more creative in our designs because our contractors were not really encouraged to think outside of the box,” Kelly says.

Each contractor must now be prequalified to meet specific bonding and capability requirements. “They have to have adequate bonding capacity to handle the projects and the quality of the work – we don’t want to deal with poor construction and we look for someone who will stand behind their work,” says Eric Laventure, executive director of school facilities and construction in Miami-Dade’s District One.

The new qualification guidelines and delivery process, Kelly says, have allowed the county to succeed at delivering higher quality buildings under tighter schedules. “In the last couple of years, both the designers and our contractors have been doing extremely well on keeping on schedule,” she notes.

“When we did mostly hard-bid projects, that was one of the problems – we didn’t seem to have the tight control over the quality of the contractors who would bid,” Kelly explains. “When we went to the design/build and CM at-risk, we got a much higher-quality contractor.”

Prototype for Performance
Perhaps one of the more progressive approaches the district has taken to cut costs and construction schedules is its prototype designs. The prototype system is intended to deliver a high-performance school that is distinguishable in the community as a place of learning.

“The main reason we went with the prototypes is to quickly [access] a set of construction documents to build from,” Laventure explains. “Prototypes afford us that ability when we have a need for a new elementary school.

“We take the prototype to the new site and go through the design process where we do not have to redesign that building from scratch, but rather adapt that design to the current site.”

Laventure explains that four groups of architects collaborated to develop the prototype program for early childhood, elementary, K-8 and middle schools. The goal was to come up with a design that could be easily adapted to different sites based on the site layout and size, with the ability to be expanded to as needed.

Laventure describes the prototype designs as “open and airy,” with bold, primary colors. The classrooms are located in pods and connected to central gathering plazas via walkways. The central space is bordered by administrative offices and the auditorium.

“We have gone from a conventional block-and-stucco [design] to tilt-up construction,” he says. The buildings also had to contain an “architectural presence,” Laventure explains. “We didn’t want plain-jane boxes – we wanted them to fit in with the community.”

Suffolk Construction’s Expertise
Suffolk Construction had secured several contracts with Miami-Dade County Public Schools, but not until 2005 did the pace at which it was awarded projects quicken. With a strong emphasis on construction in the education sector, the Southeast division of Suffolk has earned several contracts with Miami-Dade County Public Schools.

“About 35 percent of our portfolio in Florida is in the education sector, which consists of five counties,” Vice President of Education Dagoberto Diaz says. “In the past four to five years, there has been a tremendous boom in people moving to the tri-county area, which includes Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach county. This increase in population has resulted in the construction of new schools. Moreover, the need to keep up with the ever-growing technology has resulted in the upgrade of existing schools that date back to the 1940s and 1950s.

“The [school district’s] goal is to make sure the county has the proper education facilities for the students that live in those cities,” Diaz asserts. “So part of their business plan is to make sure they have sufficient classrooms for the students so they can excel.”

A Growing Market
In a little more than 12 years, Suffolk’s Florida division has experienced marked success with education construction. From its main office located in West Palm Beach, Fla., and satellite offices in Miami, Naples and Sarasota, Suffolk has the ability to secure contracts within a wide market, Diaz says.

When the district shifted away from the hard-bid process, Suffolk made the transition and began completing work using the CM at-risk delivery method. “Basically, what the district found, was that the low-bid process is not as effective at the end of the day,” Diaz asserts.

Suffolk is currently constructing six schools for the district, the largest being the North Miami Senior High School. Located in North Miami, this 439,947-square-foot facility is being built adjacent to an existing middle school on the south end of the site and the existing high school to the north.

The building is constructed using concrete tilt-panels, which extend from one to four stories. The plan is arranged around a fully landscaped courtyard, which will provide an area where students can congregate to study, eat lunch and socialize. Costing $85.7 million, this school will feature a 1,000-seat auditorium, indoor gymnasium with locker rooms, a kitchen/dining building and technology-enhanced classrooms.

Because of the nearby middle school and surrounding community, Suffolk is particularly careful on how they deliver construction materials so it does not disturb the school and businesses. It is accomplishing this by working off-peak hours and coordinating deliveries with the adjacent schools. The two-year, three-phase project is expected to be completed in 2009.

The Miami Beach Senior High School is the second high school under construction in the company’s portfolio. The 340,000-square-foot building poses similar challenges for the construction team because of its close proximity to the existing high school. Since the replacement school is being built in phases, Diaz says students will be relocated to the new buildings as they go online, and the existing facility will be closed and eventually demolished.

“There has been a tremendous amount of coordination that has had to happen in order to build this facility,” Diaz notes. “The site is very tight and the school houses a large student population, so our company [must] work around the operations of the school.”

Using design features that resemble the Art Deco look, Zyscovich Architects designed the $66.5 million structure. The design includes a series of cantilevered, horizontal planes, as well as and interplay of score lines to provide an attractive building. The structural framing of the building is a variation of concrete pre-stressed joist, steel joist and steel and pour-in-place concrete beams. Due to its close location to the existing school, specific safety precautions were taken during the erection of the three-story, 10-inch thick concrete panels. Some of these precautions included erecting the panels after school hours and providing extra bracing to prevent the panels from shifting once tilted in place. 

When completed in early 2009, the building will include an 800-seat auditorium with a high-tech lighting and sound system, science classrooms with laboratories, a gymnasium with locker rooms and a new dining/kitchen building.

Built with Ease
Working with MC Harry Associates, Suffolk is heavily involved in constructing prototype elementary schools for the district. State School A-1 is the first of three prototypes to finish this year. This 88,451-square-foot, $20.6 million school is comprised of six buildings – one two-story administrative building, two two-story classroom buildings, a kitchen/dining facility and room for two other classroom buildings. The buildings are connected by a series of covered concrete walkways and feature open-air landscape plazas. MC Harry designed the structure with a series of intersecting planes and bright, primary colors.

Based on the prototype delivery system, Diaz says, the district can make faster decisions and get quick turnaround on projects, while simultaneously developing a project that is cost-effective.

“It goes beyond design and into how we organize working designs so that if we had been called up tomorrow, we could rearrange plans and put out a full set of documents,” MC Harry Principal Thomas Carlson says. “The other important concept is that even though it is a prototype design, it can look different and evolve to fit in with the neighborhood and the site.”

In part, the overwhelming need for new capacity helped push the design process along. “Normally this would take three years from the concept to opening the first set of doors – we did it in two years,” Carlson adds. “The district cut through the red tape to get the decisions made quickly. The owner, architect and the design group worked closely to meet that challenge.”

The plan uses the “kit of parts” concept, which allows the district to place the buildings in a way that accommodates any given site, without affecting the function of the school. The prototype design called for five-classroom buildings arranged around a common space, where buildings can be added if needed. “The idea is that the common space is a place where the five classrooms can come together and have break-out activities,” Principal James Piersol says.

State School U-1 and V-1 are built using the State School A-1 prototype design. Similar to A-1, these schools will feature a two-story administrative building and three two-story classroom facilities. Although Suffolk had previous experience with the A-1 prototype, the school district asked the contractor to complete parts of V-1 four months ahead of schedule. At the time of the request, the company was four months into construction.

To meet the district’s goal, Suffolk added crews, worked on Saturdays and increased supervision on site to closely monitor the schedule. The school was delivered in August and U-1 is expected to open in January 2008. Suffolk is also constructing elementary school W-1, the district’s fourth prototype project. �