ENR Southwest recently unveiled the winners of its annual Best Projects Competition open to firms in Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico. A panel of eight judges selected projects in a range of disciplines from Higher Education to Healthcare. FBT and contractor Jaynes Corporation were awarded Best K-12 Project for Northeast Elementary and Hermosa Middle School in Farmington, NM. Both schools were also runners up in early 2016 for AGC’s Best Building Awards.

Northeast Elementary

Farmington’s Northeast Elementary is a new two-story, 76,928 sf Pre-K through 5th grade replacement school programmed to support a student capacity of 600 students.

The tight schedule for the project’s design and construction presented challenges with its large scope of work. The new school needed to be built during the school year with the old school’s demolition and asbestos abatement occurring during the summer months. The use of BIM (Building Information Modeling) was a key element in the project’s success. Early work packages, phased steel packages and enhanced construction administrative efforts had to be used to complete this project in time for the 2015 school year.

Hermosa Middle

Hermosa Middle School is a new school that replaced an existing facility on the same site. The project includes both new buildings as well as renovation to support a student capacity of 650 students.

Hermosa’s tight schedule for design and construction was similarly challenging. Because the first floor of the new addition had a challenging interstitial space, the team utilized the in-house BIM technology to ensure everything fit before it was fabricated. Being able to model and design the right ductwork the first time saved the project time, money and resources.