Making a Middle School into a High School

In 2007, Dripping Springs Independent School District’s (DSISD) Bond included a recommendation to convert the existing High School to a new Middle School and to expand and convert the existing Middle School to become the new High School. This was based on a two-year long study conducted by the DSISD’s Long Range Facilities Planning Team consisting of 74 community members representing every part of the school district attendance area, including parents, grandparents, business owners, teachers, principals, district administrators and support staff, board members, retired community members, and consultants.

Cunningham-Allen, Inc. was honored to be selected to work on both conversion projects and provide Surveying and Civil Engineering services.

There was one stipulation:  Both projects had to be completed without ANY interruption of classes or other school services

The construction operations had to be carefully scheduled and coordinated with the school schedule and design required the facilities and services (water, wastewater, drainage, and parking) to be phased to achieve a conversion without service interruption.

As you would expect, both projects presented several challenges.  However the civil engineering challenges we faced converting the existing Middle School to the new High School were truly unique, especially the design of the wastewater service.

The existing Middle School was designed for 1,200 students and occupied a 40 acre site including an on-site wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). The new High School was to house 1,800 students, with a future capacity of 2,500 students. The district purchased an additional 60 acres to accommodate the additional facilities associated with a High School campus. Due to the significant increase in population and the planned expansion of the existing building, the existing on-site wastewater treatment plant had to be abandoned, completely redesigned at a different location and permitted to meet current State of Texas code.

As the design of the new on-site WWTP was underway, the team learned there was a possibility the City of Dripping Springs could provide wastewater service to the school. This option was attractive to DSISD since it was more economical and would eliminate substantial maintenance and operation costs associated with an on-site wastewater treatment plant.  In order to connect the school’s wastewater lines to the City’s system, a different wastewater collection system would have to be designed and constructed.

DSISD and the City of Dripping Springs started the necessary negotiations immediately, but it became clear the time needed to reach a final agreement might take longer than the planned opening date of the new High School.

A reverse schedule was prepared, starting from the opening date and listing the major design, permitting and construction milestones and “drop dead” decision dates that would have to occur for either of the wastewater options to be in place by opening day.  Based on that reverse schedule, DSISD decided to proceed with the design and construction of both options until the final agreement between the District and the City had been reached.

By the time the agreement between the City and the District was reached to use the City’s wastewater system, the on-site wastewater treatment plant had been completely designed and permitted, and the majority of the on-site wastewater infrastructure had been constructed. Luckily, no construction on the on-site wastewater treatment plant had started.

The coordination of the design, construction, and school schedule was very challenging with a looming, unchangeable opening date. In the end, having a team that was willing to work together toward one goal paid off. The entire project was constructed on schedule, on budget, and without one day of missed school – much to the dismay of the students!

Surveying at Stephenville ISD

http://www.yourstephenvilletx.com/news/local/image_09e741ee-9ebc-11e1-9575-0019bb2963f4.html

Ponds: Why do I need one? What are my choices?

If you are going to develop land around the City of Austin, you need to be aware of how important water quality is.  Below is a list of parameters you need to follow depending on the metrics of your development.

• Water quality is required in the City of Austin when a development site exceeds 20 percent impervious cover using the net site area of your site (LDC 25-8-211).  
• If you are in the Barton Springs Zone water quality is required for all development.  
• The Texas Commission for Environmental Quality (TCEQ) requires water quality when development takes place over the Edwards Aquifer.   
• The standards for design and construction of these water quality controls come from the Land Development Code and the Environmental Criteria Manual of the City of Austin.  
• If the development is outside the City of Austin but over the Edwards Aquifer, TCEQ standards apply.  
• When developing inside the City of Austin and over the Edwards Aquifer typically you can follow the City of Austin standards and your finished pond will meet the standards of TCEQ as well.  However, calculations must be shown by both standards to the respective reviewing entity.  

The list above explains why you need a pond, but what choices do you have to construct?  Two of the more common choices are a sediment and filtration pond or a wet pond.  

The sedimentation and filtration (sed-fil) pond is made up of a sedimentation basin or chamber and a sand filtration bed.  The basin and bed are separated by a rock gabion wall which is used to block large trash from entering into the sand filtration bed.  The “first flush” runoff (required to be cleaned by the City of Austin) enters the sedimentation part of the pond where large particles and trash settle to the pond bottom.  The sand media cleans the pre-determined amount of runoff as it percolates through and into perforated under-drain pipes.  The clean runoff is then released from the filtration part of the pond until the entire pond is empty.  

A wet pond gets its name from its nature; always being full of water.  This fundamental difference is used by developers as an aesthetic benefit and used by engineers as a way to clean the runoff from the site before it returns to the environment.  The forebay acts in a similar way as the sedimentation basin of a sed-fil pond.  The main pool is separated from the forebay by an earthen berm.  A substantial portion of the pollutant removal in wet ponds is due to biological processes caused by the plants that border the pond.

From a cost and constructability standpoint, a sed-fil pond is typically less intensive.  They are typically the water quality control of choice for commercial, multi-family, and school development.  Wet ponds tend to become desirable when serving larger single family developments, in which case they also serve as an aesthetic benefit to home buyers.  

Miguel Escobar is now a Licensed State Land Surveyor

Cunningham-Allen, Inc. is pleased to share the exciting news about the recent achievement by our Survey Department Manager, Miguel A. Escobar, LSLS, RPLS.

In June of last year, Miguel was sworn in as a Licensed State Land Surveyor (LSLS).  The new certification authorizes Miguel to extend his practice as a Registered Professional Land Surveyor (RPLS) to include the determination of land owned by the State of Texas or its Permanent School Fund in addition to performing Gradient Boundary and Coastal Boundary Surveys.  

A Gradient Boundary Survey is a survey to determine the boundary between the stream-bed of navigable rivers owned by the State of Texas and the upland properties which are privately owned.  A Coastal Boundary Survey is a survey to determine the boundary between submerged land along the Gulf Coast owned by the State and the privately owned upland properties.

Miguel has over fifteen (15) years of experience in increasingly responsible roles in land surveying in each company he has worked. For the last five (5) years, Miguel has managed the Survey Department for Cunningham-Allen, Inc. and is currently teaching land surveying at Austin Community College. His experience is enhanced by his Bachelor of Science degree in Geographic Information Science with a specialty in Geomatics from Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi.

CANstruction? More like FUNstruction!

CANstruction is an event put on yearly allowing companies to get together and build a structure out of canned food, show it off and then donate those cans of food to the Capital Area Food Bank.

Our team was building a Gingerbread house.

To begin with, here is what the Gingerbread house was supposed to look like:

 

First off, on Saturday, November 5th the group got together at a parking lot to "beta" test their Gingerbread house.  As you can see below the "beta" was going great until the first wall came down, then everything came crumbling with it.  Enjoy their failure...

Canstruction 11-5-2011

However Engineers do not give up this easily and so they set out to build it better and more structurally sound.  

It took about an hour on Friday night to get the cans and wood into the mall so it was ready to build on Saturday morning.  Bright and early (8 am) on Saturday morning they set out to build a beautiful Gingerbread house.  How do you think it went?

Canstruction 11-12-2011

The interior structure is really impressive.  The use of the small triangular wood structural supports is very impressive.  Also,  there were tiny wires and 3/4" plywood braces taped with Duct Tape holding the columns and roof together.

If you want to see more photos of it, jump over to the CANstruction Austin Facebook page.

Here is all the companies that worked on the project:

If you want to see what the other CANstruction Teams did...(Don't boo theirs too loudly)

CANstruction - Other Teams