Skanska winding down David Douglas High School project

Skanska USA Building is banging down the home stretch to beat the back-to-school rush at David Douglas High School in Portland.

Crews are applying final touches to the builder's $6.6 million addition project at the school in east Multnomah County.

Two major elements of the project

The school, which sits on a 44-acre campus within the Portland city limits, is among the largest high schools in the state.

Work on the project began in November and is on schedule to finish before the school year starts.

The school's nearly 2,600 students in grades 9 to 12 return Sept. 2. The teachers will arrive a week earlier.

"We're pushing to be ready," said Courtney Wilton, director of administrative services for the David Douglas School District. "We'll make it, but it's always tough pushing at the end of a job."

"We'll be done by the end of August," said project engineer Gerry Williams with Skanska USA Building. The contractor needs to hand the science building over by the first week in August so furniture and equipment can be installed.

"We're on schedule to do that," Williams said. The arts center work, which is less time critical, will still be done by the end of August, he said.

The 22,000-square-foot addition to the main high school allows consolidating most of the science department. Previously the department's lab classrooms were scattered throughout the building.

The new science wing includes two full chemistry labs, four biology labs and six lab/classroom combinations for other sciences. About 8,000 square feet of old classroom space also is being remodeled.

The second major element was adding 16,000 square feet to the school's Horner Performing Arts Center. The addition provides dedicated rehearsal and support facilities for the choir, band and orchestra.

The addition will be a quantum leap for the performing arts students, Wilton said. They previously had between 6,000 and 7,000 square feet of class space available. They often met on the stage.

"Our enrollment has grown a lot," he said. "We have some really good teachers here who are drawing kids, so it's nice to be able to accommodate that growth."

The project was not without challenges.

"We put the structures up in the middle of winter, which is obviously more difficult than in the summer," said project manager Blain Grover with Skanska USA Building. The bulk of construction projects start in the summer. "In this case, we had to flip-flop that," he said.

Because the two building additions were a quarter-mile apart, they had to be treated almost like two independent jobs, Grover said. Skanska USA Building and its subcontractors had to staff crews on each site.

The builders worked with school officials to affect campus activities as little as possible. Equipment used surface streets instead of a bus lane between the sites and workers used golf carts to shuttle back and forth.

The builders are also redoing the roofing on the arts center and two smaller buildings. Two parking lots will be torn out and redone.

Skanska USA Building serves as the construction manager/general contractor on the project. Architectural services were provided by Portland-based Rommel Architectural Partnership.

System Design Consultants of Portland is the electrical and mechanical engineer. Christopher Freshley of Portland is serving as landscape architect, Associated Consultants of Portland as structural engineer and W&H Pacific of Beaverton is contributing the civil design.