FORMA

FORMA jumped in to plan and execute a monumental amount of demo, clearing, renovations, upgrades, repairs, and installations to transform a boarded-up former school site into a safe and comfortable facility for two displaced schools in under a month.

When a significant fire damaged Highline Public Schools’ Southern Heights site in mid July — displacing both Innovation Heights Academy and Highline Virtual Academy — it was clear to District personnel that facilities could not be repaired in time to open for students the following school year. When they called FORMA the following week, we toured several District-owned properties to help assess their options and form a plan, quickly identifying their Beverly Park site as the only viable option given the very limited timetable.

Built in 1950, the original Beverly Park Elementary School had been largely closed up and de-commissioned, serving as a storage facility for the District and hosting just one Robotics program in the gym during part of the school year. With 12 classrooms, 12 portables, bathrooms, offices, a gym, and kitchen facilities largely unused and offline for over a decade, extensive work was required both inside and out to bring the campus back on line before the first day of school — just thirty days after we received NTP.

FORMA mobilized quickly to model costs, develop schedules, meet with the Fire Inspector and Building officials, order materials, apply for permits, and bring on design partners and subcontractors. Extensive demo, abatement, clearing, renovations, networking, painting, flooring, fencing, roofing, repairs, and upgrades to existing electrical and plumbing systems were divided into indoor and outdoor tracks; each managed by a veteran FORMA Superintendent, working in parallel to sequence these time-consuming and overlapping scopes and manage the craftspeople on site, which reached a peak of 84 at one point during the project–about 80% of which were on site and working with less than a week’s notice.

Working seven days a week, our crews applied 835 gallons of paint (requiring shipments from neighboring states when we procured all available in Washington), installed 33,800 sf of flooring (begun just two days after material approval), and completed 12,212 craft hours in just 26 days–achieving substantial completion in time for teachers to move in a week before the first day of school. Despite the grueling work, long hours, and hot sun we maintained a positive and collaborative environment on site with 19 consecutive days (out of only 26) of perfect attendance recorded.

With all emergency work complete and school now in session, FORMA remains on site, collaborating with stakeholders to complete additional scopes and fine tune these new spaces to best serve the needs of students now that they’ve settled into their new school. A project begun under unfortunate circumstances and executed at break-neck speed has resulted in a safe and comfortable solution for students and a long term asset for Highline Public Schools.