This is the final term paper for my Methods and Materials class from the spring of 2013.

1. Elgin Local Schools K-12 Project
Construction Systems Management 4660
Dr. Tom Marshall
Zach Himler
4/17/13
(MLA Format)

2. Introduction
I live in Marion, Ohio, and in Marion there is a school district that is known as Elgin
Local Schools. This is the school district that I graduated from in May of 2009. The schools in
this district are very old and are very out of date. Most of the schools were built clear back into
the late 1800’s early 1900’s. They tend to be smaller in size and falling apart. Not only do you
have these issues to worry about, but the whole district is located around the Scioto River that
runs through La Rue, Green Camp, and Prospect and eventually down through the Columbus
area. The school buildings are located in the flood plain area near the river, so every time the
river rises, the buildings flood and have water sitting in them. Several rooms and bathrooms
would have standing water in them for days until the water would go down or be pumped out.
Many of the bathroom toilets and sinks would have backflow come up through the plumbing and
flood even more. Because of these horrible conditions, the school district has been trying to pass
a levy for several years to get a new school building built. Finally, in 2008, the levy passed and
new buildings are currently being built. I will discuss several things about this project including
more of a description, project funding, how it is relevant to Construction Systems Management
4660, and some of the challenges of the project(Schreck, 2010).
Project Description
The current school district has all of the buildings spread out over the entire district
having a building located in the major towns of the district. There are currently two elementary
schools, one middle school, and one high school, and all of these buildings are very old and need
updated. The new building for the district will be one huge building that will have the elementary
school, middle school, and high school all in one building and will close down the old buildings
completely. Some of them may even be torn down. The new building is known as the new Elgin
K-12 School project, and is in the construction management hands of Turner Construction
(Elgin, 2012).
The construction for the $35 million building started on March 14, 2012 which lead into
pouring the first footing the next day on March 15, 2012. Remembering back to a year ago to
when this part of the project was going on, the weather was extremely warm and sunny which
allowed for the work to move very smoothly and quickly. Because of this great weather, the last

3. footing had been poured by April 11, 2012 which was two weeks ahead of the scheduled date.
Being two weeks ahead of schedule allowed the masonry crews to get an early start to building
the concrete walls. This is very critical because the building is scheduled to be built through
building enclosure, so the walls need to be done first before the rest of the project can move
forward. The building enclosure is scheduled to be finished by December of 2012 and they were
right on-time, even a little ahead of schedule. The school has 165,800 square feet of space to use
which includes a main gym and an auxiliary gym. There is no auditorium because the district
will reuse the current auditorium plus the cafeteria is made to be used as an auditorium if needed
because there is a stage up front. There is a courtyard in the middle of the building that the
building itself is built around. The building’s shell is built and everything that is left to do is
mostly interior. The project is still about ten days ahead of schedule, and it is scheduled to be
finished in the summer of 2013 just in time for school to start in September (Schreck, 2010).
Project Funding
The originalconstruction plans were going to use the same site that the building is
currently resting in now as the site for the new building and basically renovating the original
building to make it up-to-date. Elgin Schools and Turner Construction researched more into this
idea and found out that this plan would lay the new building into the 100-year flood plain and
would actually be at a lower elevation than what the current building sits. This means that there
would have to be tons and tons of dirt brought in to raise the elevation of the building to get it
out of the 100-year flood plain. I interviewed Steve Hoyt who is the Project Executive for Turner
Construction. He told me that Turner Construction thought that Elgin should think about moving
the location of the project to a different site to save money and have less work just to lift the new
building’s elevation. He told me that it would cost $1.5 million to do all this dirt work. Elgin
then decided to buy 35 acres of land across the street from the current building for $200,000 and
move the site to this new location. Not only did this save money, but it causes less disruption on
the students and the school functions that go during and after school hours (Hoyt, 2013).
Elgin Local Schools had to pass a levy by the people who live in the district to get the
new school approved and built. The levy would use some money given by the state to use on the
project and the rest would come from the school district. The taxpayers passed the levy that
included a combined $7.49 million, 28 year bond issue and a $1 million continuous improvement

4. levy. The bond issue covers the local share of a $35 million building project that included $20
million from the Ohio School Facilities Commission Fund(Schreck, 2010).
Relevance to CSM 4660
This project relates to the Peurifoy textbook for our class in several of the chapters out of
the book. The first way is that there was a bunch of earthwork that was done to prepare the
footing to be poured and set into place. This is included in Chapter 1 (Machines Make it
Possible), Chapter 2 (Equipment Economics), Chapter 3 (Planning for Earthwork Construction),
Chapter 7 (Dozers), Chapter 8 (Scrapers), Chapter 9 (Excavators), Chapter 10 (Trucks and
Hauling Equipment), Chapter 11 (Finishing Equipment), and Chapter 16 (Concrete and Concrete
Equipment). Chapter 1 is involved because there are machines involved in this project. Chapter 2
is included because there has to be costs figured up for every aspect of the project. Chapter 3 is
all of the planning of the earthwork. Chapters 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 includes dozers, scrapers,
excavators, trucks and hauling equipment, and finishing equipment, and all of these were used in
this project. Chapter 16 is concrete and concrete equipment, and concrete is used on most
projects including this one. It is very rare to find a project that doesn’t have concrete
used(Peurifoy, Schexnayder, Shapira, and Schmitt).
Project Challenges
There were several challenges of this project that had to be dealt with during the
construction. One challenge was dealing with the elevation of the project and making sure the
building is out of the 100-year flood plain that surrounds the whole construction site area. They
brought in enough dirt to raise the building out of the flood plain. Another challenge that I have
already talked about was how the placement of the building could save money, so they had to
find the right location to start building. The third challenge was with funding from the Ohio
School Facilities Commission Fund. The number of students who attend school in the Elgin
Local School district has been decreasing years now and the state of Ohio has lowered the
amount of funding that is going to be given to the project. A fourth challenge was dealing with
one of the workers having a heart attack while working on the job. There are several challenges
that follow an incident like this. They include, but aren’t limited to, dealing with OSHA, and

5. helping the family get through incident and helping them. These were just some of the challenges
of this project (Hoyt, 2013).
Conclusion
This $35 million project has had many positives with it and many challenges as well. The
Elgin Local Schools K-12 project is currently ahead of schedule by about ten days. If the
progress keeps up at this rate, the project should be finished with days to spare before school
starts in the fall. The project has been a huge success so far, with the exception of the one
incident, and Turner Construction, the Elgin community, and the students are all looking forward
to seeing the building after completion and just enjoying the new building.

6. "Elgin Local Schools."Elgin Local Schools ISD News.N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2013.
<http://www.elginschools.org/content_page.aspx?cid=42.
Hoyt, Steve. Personal Interview. 15 Mar 2013.
Peurifoy, Robert, Clifford Schexnayder, AviadShapira, and Robert Schmitt.8th Edition. New
York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2006. Print.
Schreck, Justin. "Justin Schreck." Elgin building site moved across the road . Blogger, 09 Jun
2010. Web.Web. 17 Apr. 2013. <http://j-dogthe2.blogspot.com/2010/06/elgin-buildingsite-moved-across-road.html>.