They had to move a creek to construct a new Hollis Academy building in Greenville, SC. The kindergarten-through-fifth-grade school building will replace an existing structure that sits in front of it on a 5-acre (2-h) building site at the intersection of Goodrich and Eighth streets. The entire parcel contains about 25 acres (10 h), according to school officials. The original structure, which began life as Judson High School, was built 45 years ago near a stream that crosses behind it on the school grounds. But Beers-York Construction Co. of Greenville won the task Aug. 1 of erecting a new school behind the old one and, in a second phase, removing the old one. That sequential feature of the $13-million contract meant that the new building had to be placed in the rear of the existing one. In short, it needed to be built where the enclosed creek flowed. “It’s a fairly difficult site,” admitted Dan Roberts. He is project architect for the job, working for the firm of F. J. Clark & Anderson. The Greenville County school property is low-lying with a variety of contours and what Beers-York project manager George Bingham calls “lots of groundwater.” Extra gravel was hauled in to provide a surer working surface for equipment. Bingham turned to grading contractor McMillan-Carter Inc. of nearby Greer, SC, to re-route the unnamed creek. That stage of the job required the removal of 1,000 ft. (304 m) of twin 48-in. (122 cm) pipes through which the creek waters passed. The flow was diverted around the edge of the job site and encased in box culverts. The pipes ran through the site about 3 ft. (90 cm) underground. The contractor used Komatsu PC220 and Caterpillar 330 excavators to expose the buried pipe and to dig a new trench where the creek eventually would run. Then McMillan-Carter officials and engineers huddled. They had to see how to work their way around a little problem: the 6-by-8-ft. (180-by-240 cm) box culverts needed to relocate the stream would not be manufactured in time for placement. The contractors looked at unwanted delay if he shut off his equipment and waited for the Spartanburg plant of Metromont Concrete Products to deliver the culverts. The solution was to start the 1,200 ft. (364 m) of diverted creek water running through available pipes, instead of culverts. “We started out with the double run of 60-inch concrete pipe,” said McMillan-Carter co-owner Buddy Carter. The cylinders eventually were to feed into a transition box where box culverts would take over carrying the water through the site. Carter used the Cat 330 to place the pipe, each 8-ft. (240 cm) section weighing 6 tons (5.4 t). About half the length of the new creek bed was laid with the pipe before the box culverts began to arrive on site. Then Carter subbed out some crane work. The arriving culverts were twice as heavy as the piping, weight easily handled by a 60-ton (54 t) crane, the smaller of two lifting units on the job. The other crane, a 120-ton (108 t) unit, was used to fit in place the transition box, which measured 6 by 8 ft. (180 by 240 cm). It came in two pieces, each weighing almost 25 tons (22.5 t). Once placed, the box culverts were fitted to it, end to end, for the remaining 600 ft. (320 m) of new creek routing. “We kept digging ahead and back-filling behind and it went real smoothly,” Carter said of the process. “Everything has been going real smoothly.” He credits fellow McMillan-Carter overseer John Castles with expediting equipment and supplies to keep the project on schedule despite the real potential for delay. McMillan-Carter Inc. began this kind of on-time work 22 years ago. The creek relocated, Carter shaped the site for the school’s construction using a Cat 621 scraper with a Cat D8 pushing it. The ditch that was created when the original pipe was disinterred was filled with suitable soil from on site and packed with a Cat 815 roller. Some 40,000 cu. yds. (30,400 cu m) of dirt also was borrowed from a pit off site, where Carter had Cat 330 and Komatsu 400 excavators working. Carter’s crew also laid drainage pipe and curb and gutter. A parking lot will contain 111 parking spaces. The building that will rise on the reconstructed site will contain 30 classrooms for as many as 1,000 students. At 108,000 sq. ft. (9,720 sq m), the building will about double the size of the existing school. The new structure has a step-down level inside to accommodate the terrain and a split profile on the outside: One wing of the the building will be two-story, the second level containing more of the classrooms. From the outside, the first architectural feature that will catch the eye is its color scheme. Four colors of brick will form its walls, with some glass block wall sandwiched in as well. Boral Brick is supplier of masonry product. Metal accent canopies will cover some extended areas. One will project from the building in front to follow the curvature of what Roberts calls a “roundabout,” the curved driveway at the front entrance. Roberts has three interior courtyards breaking up the floor plan, two of them open to the sky. A standing seam metal roof will cover the third courtyard. Not counting curb and gutter, Bingham estimates the project will consume about 2,500 cu. yds. (1,900 cu m) of concrete supplied by Metromont. Carolina Concrete Pumping, a Charlotte, NC, firm, will pump the material where needed. Construction of the school is the first phase of the project and is targeted for completion by mid-November of next year. The second phase, demolition of the old building, will take about four months beyond that. Beers-York was created in 1996 when Beers Construction Co. of Atlanta, GA, purchased York Construction of Greenville. Beers goes back nearly 100 years, York about a quarter of that. The combined company confines its work to South Carolina projects. President is J. Mack Woods Jr. This story also appears on Construction Equipment Guide.
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