Schools Add Space for Students with ezIQC®

Challenge

Norman County West High School called Halstad, Minnesota home for 36 years. In that time, West High changed expectations for what a small school in Minnesota could accomplish, setting new standards for academic and athletic excellence. Despite all its success, West High faced declining enrollment like other rural schools across the state. After months of research and planning the Norman County West School Board reached an agreement with Independent School District #2854 to send their 6th-12th grade students to the Ada-Borup School beginning in the fall of the 2018-2019 school year. The Ada-Borup School District now needed to add space due to the influx of students and had only one summer to find a solution.

Solution

The Ada-Borup School Board and Administration, Facilities Manager Doug Slininger and other decision-makers weighed their options, including whether to build a permanent addition to the school or to erect temporary classrooms. Ultimately, they decided to build an addition using ezIQC from Gordian. Ada-Borup purchased construction services by accessing ezIQC through their local cooperative purchasing network, Sourcewell. For the school, it came down to time and money.

“We reached out to another firm to obtain a cost estimate using the conventional route when we were first considering the building addition.  It was nearly double the cost and came with a four-month extended construction time. We like the ease of using a cooperative contract to streamline the process—going with ezIQC got this project done plain and simple,” Doug Slininger said.

Nor-Son Construction was awarded the contract in part because they worked successfully with the school district before on a bathroom renovation. The Scope of Work for this project was exhaustive. It included installation of footings and foundation, below-ground plumbing and sprinkler installation, demolition of interior doors and infill of windows in existing classrooms. And that’s just what was finished by August 1. After that, exterior concrete was laid for walkways and roofing and more windows were installed. This job was significant considering the tight timeline.

“Going with ezIQC got this project done plain and simple.”

Doug Slininger, Facilities Manager, Ada-Borup Schools

After work began, Nor-Son discovered underground geothermal lines were not located where the blueprints indicated and had to be relocated before work could continue. Nor-Son found a sub-contractor to move the lines using the ezIQC contract. If Ada-Borup had used traditional procurement, work would have stopped until a change order could be negotiated, potentially adding weeks to the timeline and thousands of dollars to the budget. With ezIQC, this large change was no trouble at all.

Result

The Ada-Borup High School students were in the new classrooms by fall break in October. Using ezIQC instead of traditional construction procurement saved the school four months of work and cut their costs almost in half. The newly arriving students integrated seamlessly into their new schools and Ada-Borup is continuing Norman County West High School’s tradition of academic, arts and athletic excellence.