Windham High School

Windham High School

Windham, NH

The Windham School District faced the challenge of building a new 192,000 square foot high school in a community which had never funded a secondary school. In addition, after a successful town bond vote, the District’s Building Committee also faced the challenge of adjusting the school’s original program, design and budget to accommodate a change in the building’s site. Because Harvey offered successful experience developing new high schools, they were hired by the District to provide pre-construction planning and construction management services to assure that the new school would open for the 2009 school year.

Harvey immediately prepared a comprehensive project budget, for the District’s use, to ensure that all project costs were accounted for including construction costs and design costs; engineering costs; furniture, equipment and technology costs; and miscellaneous costs associated with building a high school. As result of controlling the project’s budget, the District’s team made decisions which controlled the project’s the overall budget and protected the approved bond amount.

Although the newly acquired site provided 138-acres of land that was critical for the District’s educational development and future growth, the selected site burdened the project’s budget: over 300,000 cubic yards of ledge needed to be removed from the site; a 3/4 mile long entry road to town specifications was to be constructed; all roadside utilities were to be buried; and additional off-site improvements were required by the State. Harvey worked closely with site contractors and local officials to control site costs by developing a plan to balance the site, avoiding expensive trucking cost from the site; skillfully negotiating contracts; and value engineering site development plans.

The school features variably sized instruction spaces including small and medium capacity seminar rooms, traditional classrooms, operable walls for flexible spaces, as well as a 600 seat auditorium and a 1,400 seat gymnasium. The building also offers both wireless and hard wired data systems throughout, accommodations for LCD projection in every classroom, six science labs, graphics classrooms, a media center, a TV studio, fitness center, locker rooms, band space and chorus space.

PROJECT INFO

Design Team: Lavallee Brensinger Architects

Completion Date: June 2009