AGC ACE 2018 Submittal

Riverview School

Haselden provided construction services for this brand new PK-8 neighborhood school (pic 1) that serves the area south of Glenwood Springs. The new, 76,000 SF school is located 2.5 miles south of Glenwood Springs just east of the intersection of Colorado 82 and the Westbank (Garfield County Road 154) and opened with 345 students and 45 staff members. The school can eventually serve up to 450 students. Its design features include views of the Roaring Fork River; a 7,000 SF gymnasium (pic 2); a youth baseball/soccer field; a dedicated space for art, music (pic 3), and technology; and breakout spaces in every classroom section.

The most stunning design element of this school is the striking view it affords directly up the Roaring Fork River and Valley. The open atrium design (pic 4) highlights this feature, and the design supports 21st century learning with its group breakout rooms, teacher collaboration rooms between each classroom, operable partition walls, and innovation center for technology.

Several challenges arose during this project. One challenge presented began during excavation. Digging the foundation required considerable rock excavation and necessitated purchasing a special rock bucket in order to accomplish it, which we didn’t know would be required until we reached the bedrock. Another challenge common to mountain projects was the weather. Building in the heart of the Rocky Mountains is always a challenge, and when your project is nestled between two ski areas, you can count on getting a good amount of snow!

Despite these obstacles, this team went above and beyond in their delivery to the owner. This project was both ahead of schedule and under budget! Incredible teamwork allowed the Riverview School team to give the District and the community something they weren’t expecting—occupancy of the entire school before the school year started. Originally – and per the contract – the three-wing project was to be completed in multiple phases. Two of the wings would be turned over for the beginning of school, and the third wing (phase two), would be turned over three weeks later. Because of close coordination with the subcontractors and old-fashioned hard work, we were able to turn the entire school over to the owner before school commenced in August (pic 5).

This was accomplished through sequencing and working weekends – specifically to allow the drywall teams to finish. This fulfilled the school district’s wish not to have to utilize temporary classrooms. Taking that three weeks off the schedule had the added benefit of saving the project money. This brought us in under our GMP and provided the District with extra money which they used for a trail system down to the school, playground equipment (pic 6), and solar panels. This was achieved by being fiscally responsible with allowances, organizing smart buy-outs, stellar on-site coordination, ensuring there was no out-of-sequence work or change orders, and proper management of subcontractors.

The high quality of the project was readily apparent during the highly successful punchlist. The punchlist was essentially completed when school started, meaning there were no workers in the school while it was in session and no disruptions to the students.

The campus was built with future expansion and environmental considerations. To preserve open space on the site for a future additional school development and play areas and ballfields, the building is a partial two-story with a footprint under 48,000 SF. The academic classroom wings’ orientation optimizes daylighting harvesting and the effectiveness of shading devices, preventing unwanted heat gain and glare into the building.

Student, faculty, and visitor safety is of the highest concern to Haselden. One of the first safety precautions at the Riverview project was conducting background checks through the Colorado Bureau of Investigations on all construction personnel. This included reviewing the national sex offender registry, checking criminal history, performing drug screenings, and examining past driving records. We hold our subcontractors to the same standards. All safety regulations were written into our subcontracts to ensure complete compliance with Haselden’s site-specific safety procedures.

Site-specific safety agreements took into account not only our safety protocols but also those of the school district to ensure that we achieved the highest level of safety on the project. All construction personnel completed a site safety orientation before they were allowed on site, after which they received a sticker that they were required to wear on their hard hats. This allowed Haselden’s project team to quickly identify authorized personnel. In addition to on-site safety orientations, this project also held safety instruction for fall protection and forklift training.

There was no lost time on this project which had a total of 25,387 hours.

Riverview School is a major boon to the community. It is greatly alleviating the overcrowding many other schools in the area were experiencing. The school supports a variety of learning styles, featuring flexible classrooms, collaborative space, and a dual-language model, marking a new era for the district that offers increasingly diverse choices for both parents and students. The colorful and thoughtful design helps students to engage in learning, while the flexible spaces provide opportunity for continued area growth.

The most innovative aspect of this school, is its teaching/learning approach. Riverview is a dual language school, meaning classes are taught in both English and Spanish. By the time students reach 5th grade, they will be fluent in both languages. Only a handful of dual language schools exist in Colorado, and even fewer in the mountains. This school offers the community a distinctly different learning opportunity.

The building is zoned for security and for public use. The public spaces are grouped around the main entry, lobby (pic 7), and commons to accommodate after-school programs in restricted portions of the building. During public events, the academic wings can be closed off with pairs of doors, only allowing access to the gym, music room, commons/cafeteria (pic 8), public toilet rooms and art/innovation lab suite, while maintaining required egress paths.

Riverview is one of several schools included in the Roaring Fork Schools’ $122M bond passed by voters in 2015. Although the school is currently a PK-8, it will eventually become solely an elementary school, and a separate middle school and high school will be built.

The two story entry and commons affords outstanding views of the Roaring Fork River Valley and surrounding mountains, while the secure administration area provides optimal internal functionality, convenience, and supervision of the drop-off and entrance doors, plus the playground area.

The architectural concept for the building enlists the history, character, and culture of the Valley and Glenwood Canyon geological formations. The commons area is formed like a canyon, with non-rectilinear forms and interplay of horizontal and vertical spaces. Exterior materials use texture and color relating to the deep red and rusticated canyon walls. Durable metal panel siding balances the cost of the brick and correlates to the galvanized siding and sheet metal roofing prevalent in mountain communities. Its greens and greys emulate sage brush, the blue-green river, and lighter distant mountain peaks.

The idea of the ‘Arts District’ (composed of the Music, Art, and Innovation Lab) near the front door reinforces the importance of the arts at Riverview. This area is multi-functional, highly flexible, and adaptable, lending itself to a variety of functions, presentations, group activities, and educational delivery modalities, both throughout the school day and for after-hours community use.

Studies of classroom groupings showed the most flexible model as four learning suites with seven classrooms each. Each suite has access to three small breakout spaces and one large commons. This encourages collaboration between students and staff while providing an environment for individual attention. The Learning Suites are secured from the public spaces in order to address safety and security concerns.