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On the north side of the Columbia River, more than two years after voters approved a $458 million bond measure for Vancouver Public Schools, construction is taking place at 28 school sites. Workers are remodeling, expanding, replacing or upgrading existing facilities, and building new ones.

At one site, two replacement schools are being built under one new roof, on property between their existing buildings on MacArthur Boulevard. McLoughlin Middle School and Marshall Elementary School will operate on a single 203,000-square-foot campus.

LSW Architects designed the project, and Skanska USA Building is serving as the construction manager/general contractor. Kramer Gehlen & Associates is performing structural engineering, and PAE Consulting Engineers is handling mechanical, electrical and plumbing engineering.

Ground was broken in June 2018, and work is scheduled to finish in March 2020. It’s one of the first public school projects to feature mass-timber structural components.

鈥淲e’ve got two main types of construction,鈥� Skanska superintendent Krys Lukesh said. 鈥淥ne of them is wood framing in the classroom wings, while the main core buildings will have tilt panels. They all utilize glulam columns to support the (cross-laminated timber) and then they will all have CLT decks and roofs on them, so it’s a couple of different methods.鈥�

The new building will replace a pair of aging schools previously improved in 1992. Designers engaged staff, students, parents and community members in a process that produced plans for a two-story structure with a great deal of daylighting as well as modern, secure access both from the outside and between the two schools.

The massing is dominated by five large structures connected by second-story sky-bridges. On the west end of the 1,000-foot-long site a pair of two-story classroom wings will serve the middle school. Two more classroom wings on the east end will serve the elementary school.

Some of the space, including a kitchen and 鈥渇amily-community resource center,鈥� will be shared. Another such space will be a huge media center able to become two smaller ones via a partition.

A new gymnasium is included in the project, but it will be built on the site of the existing middle school after it’s eventually demolished. The old elementary school will be remodeled to accommodate programs now located at other schools.

鈥淚t’s all one building,鈥� Skanska project manager Brian Hover said. 鈥淩ight now, with phase one, the schools minus the gym will be done. And once they’re moved in we’ll take this school (McLoughlin) down.鈥�

The new building is dominated by wood, both structurally and aesthetically. Many of the CLT panels manufactured by British Columbia firm Structurlam will be left exposed, particularly in the shared spaces and the sky-bridges.

鈥淚t gives a Northwest look with the wood,鈥� Hover said. 鈥淎nd the CLT decks are structural, so instead of doing steel we’re doing CLT, and that becomes the structural surface between floors and the roof as well. You get bigger spans with it, and it installs fast.鈥�

The project’s CLT panels range in size from five-ply to nine-ply 鈥� from 6.5 inches to 12 inches thick.

Skanska project manager Scott Mettler and Lukesh both noted that mass-timber projects of this type require substantial collaboration with designers because the prefabrication makes on-site adjustments more challenging.

鈥淚 just think that in general with wood construction you have to do that in order to make the MEP penetrations,鈥� Mettler said. 鈥淭hat’s one thing we had to do ahead of time, and it’s a different sequence than usual. With the MEP routing in a steel building, sometimes you would come up with your MEP design and you have all these penetrations and then you have supplemental steel design package.鈥�

It just means a more complete design is needed earlier in the process, Lukesh added.

鈥淭hat’s probably the biggest challenge of using it, because there are a lot of benefits to using it,鈥� he said.