Schuler School construction on track

By Peggy Revell
Southern Alberta Newspapers
Construction of the new school in Schuler remains on track, with students expected to move in to the new facility after March 2017.
“Things are going well,” said project manager Brian Frey, with piles installed and about half the concrete poured for the grade beams. Some steelwork has also begun, with starting soon.
“And then it will begin to look more like a building instead of a demolition area.”
The project had some delays at first, including a few cost overruns due to results from testing the sub-surface to ensure a sound foundation.
“When we drilled the (first) four test holes the ground conditions were sort of not great, they were borderline acceptable,” said Frey. A couple of test piles were put in at this eight-metre mark, and these failed testing.
“So deeper holes were dug, and they went down to 15 metres and found good soil conditions,” said Frey. The test piles installed at this depth passed the test.
“Now that we’re done with the unknown work — because it’s a new building we’re not renovating or anything — it should go pretty well from now on,” said Frey.
The delay helped in some respects.
“It gave the contractor a chance to review all the drawings,” said Frey. “That’s a common thing where they review everything while construction is going on and then they send in these request for information sheets throughout the whole project, and they want clarification on this or that.
“Well, they’ve been doing that all along now, so they’ve got almost all the answers, so there really shouldn’t be anything holding things up as well.”
The school is scheduled to be completed by March 2017. After students are relocated, the old school will be demolished with a tentative completion date of June 2017.
“Because it’s such an old building there’s a lot of hazardous materials in there that have to be dealt with first. You can’t just knock down a building like that, you have to remove all that material first,” said Frey, adding there’s a parking lot and play structure to be completed as well.