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These days, public education projects are helping drive the regional construction market. Hillsboro School District, for instance, is moving forward with a rash of projects via money from a $408 million bond approved by voters in 2017. Two new elementary schools are being built, another is being replaced, and a middle school and a high school are being expanded.

2019 is likely to be the busiest summer of the entire bond cycle, district bond marketing specialist Jane Siguenza said. One of this year’s projects is the expansion and refurbishment of Evergreen Middle School.

鈥淚t’s getting a media center addition with classrooms,鈥� Siguenza said. 鈥淎nd there are interior classrooms also. The old library is being converted into six classrooms, and the cafeteria and commons area are getting changed also. The reason why we’re doing this project is because of the growth in this attendance area, so it’s going to accommodate 200 more students.鈥�

Evergreen was built in 1981. Despite several expansions, the school has never stayed ahead of steady population growth in Washington County. So, in addition to a new, 18,000-square-foot addition housing a media center and library, classrooms will be added in a new wing on the school’s south side.

Also, the school is gaining new roofing, HVAC equipment, security equipment and furniture. Seismic upgrades will be carried out as well. P&C Construction is serving as the general contractor for the project, which was designed by Soderstrom Architects.

Ground was broken this past spring, and demolition started around that time. But large-scale work 鈥� including excavation and site work for the expansion 鈥� really only began in mid-June, after the school year ended.

Completion is anticipated for approximately Spring Break 2020.

鈥淭eachers were still here Monday, so our first day of hitting it hard and heavy was Tuesday,鈥� site superintendent Michael Fry said. 鈥淲e actually did an early start on Saturday, came in and demoed all the ceilings while the teachers weren’t here. The staff and admin here have been amazing, though; they’ve been great to work with.鈥�

The addition will be constructed using primarily concrete tilt panels, Fry said. On the interior, however, a structural composite lumber product, laminated veneer lumber (LVL), will be used around the building perimeter as a means of increasing shear wall strength and seismic support for the building’s structural steel and glulam framework.

鈥淚t’s a fairly standard tilt-up addition,鈥� Fry said. 鈥淚t’s always interesting tying a tilt-up into an existing building, but everything’s pretty standard. It’s structural steel with glulams holding up the roof.鈥�

LVL beams are used for a number of applications, but in this case in combination with glulams as an outer tension lam to increase the overall strength of the glulam beam.

To accommodate the expansion, some classrooms will be removed from the existing building and replaced by new glulams and structural steel. Engineers even managed to simplify the usual methods of tying new expansions into existing structures, Fry added.

鈥淲here the tilt-ups come in, shoring up this end of the roof here, there are no expansion joints,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hey actually tied the buildings in together structurally.鈥�