Overall Winner: Guilford Park High School
Construction statistics give a sense of the enormity of the Guilford Park High School project.
Located in Jessup, the new public school measures 289,000 square feet. Its 75-acre site contains football, baseball, softball, field hockey and multipurpose fields, basketball and tennis courts, 14 bioretention ponds, two stormwater management ponds, more than two miles of chain link fence and one mile of new county road that the project team was required to construct. To complete the building itself, crews had to install 720 rooftop solar panels, 9,720 linear feet of concrete pipe and 62,700 square feet of terrazzo floor.
But the numbers only tell part of the story.
Construction of Guilford Park began shortly after the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
Subcontractors wrestled with supply chain challenges and health-related work restrictions. BGE struggled to secure electrical switch gear, the project’s steel order arrived at the last minute and an acute shortage of roofing insulation threatened to derail the construction schedule.
However, Oak Contracting, the project’s general contractor, and subcontractor Cole Roofing devised a plan to circumvent the shortage, keep construction on schedule and ultimately provide the school system with a superior roof.
Cole’s crew installed a temporary roof. They attached 5/8th-inch plywood on top of the roof’s metal deck then covered the plywood with rolled roofing to make the structure weather-tight, said Wayne Temple, Superintendent with Oak Contracting.
The measure enabled the project team to meet a critical, Christmas 2023 deadline to close in the building. The plan, which was vetted with the roofing supplier to avoid any warranty issues, also spared the project team from a time-consuming removal of the temporary roof.
“We could just build over the temporary roof once the insulation came in,” Temple said. “Everything that was added on top was mechanically fastened down to the metal deck. The whole system was what the project called for and the 5/8th plywood was fire-rated, so it actually benefited the school.”
Completing work inside the school in order to meet its opening date just eight months later required heightened coordination and cooperation, Temple said. Oak arranged for successive trades to begin on the top floor of building and wind their way down, carefully positioning operations to ensure that each trade had needed access and could remain productive.
“The school is all block walls so the mason stayed in front of the window man who stayed in front of the terrazzo guy, and it all worked very well,” he said.
Completing the terrazzo floor in the hallways, lobby, cafeteria and commons area was especially challenging due both to the sheer amount of terrazzo in the design and the complexity of that design. Working a hallway or room at a time, craftsmen meticulously completed layouts, poured the terrazzo and polished the surface.
Outside, one construction professional helped ensure efficient and high-quality completion of site work and outdoor amenities.
“The superintendent from the excavating company stayed on site from day one until the end of the project,” Temple said. “They did all the utility work, the storm drain, the water lines, sewer lines, manholes, roads, curb and gutter. They installed over two miles of fence and one mile of county road that we had to put in. They graded all the tennis courts, basketball courts, baseball, football and other fields. They put in the bleachers and the bioretention structures. They worked on everything as soon as it became available to them. It means a lot to have someone there right through the project who follows the drawings, knows what is done and what has to be done.”
Upon completion of the school, Principal Joshua Wasilewski said the project team’s “expertise and attention to detail ensured that the project was completed to the highest standards, and their dedication to excellence was truly commendable. They treated the project as their first priority and approached it with passion and dedication.”