Making the Grade

Ventana Ranch Elementary School Fills Need

by Neal Singer

The $10.3 million Ventana Ranch Elementary School under construction in northwest Albuquerque uses simple, colorful forms that might appeal to a child. The overall horseshoe-shaped structure and curved roof canopies at building entryways add whimsy.

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But the building, which was designed for 700 children, will likely be overcrowded when it opens to 1,000 pupils this school year when phase one of the project is completed.

A sharp increase in the surrounding population has already rendered the new 71,000-sq.-ft. building inadequate, said Mark Shumate of Albuquerque-based general contractor Shumate Constructors, Inc. "The challenge to the school system is that when this building is done, they'll need another," he said.
"In the initial photos when we first laid out this project only five years ago, there were no houses around," said Susan Johnson, contract architect of record for Fanning Bard Tatum Architects AIA, Ltd., based in Albuquerque.

Portable classrooms, expected to be removed to create space for a playground once the 12-acre project is completed in December, may yet remain to handle the extra students.

Albuquerque-based subcontractor Carlos Chavez, whose company, Mayan Construction Inc., poured a few thousand yards of concrete into the Ventana project, said that he found Shumate to be a mastermind of coordination.
On this job, Shumate needed to be.

Complications from the unusual roof design required change orders to secure approval from city inspectors, said Shumate's assistant project superintendent Dennis Thompson.

"The school's an architectural masterpiece, but we had to revise a few details," he added.

Metal decking originally slated for classroom roofing wound up with gaps.

"When the roofing inspector wouldn't let us use metal as planned, we poured lightweight concrete under it to get the job done," Thompson said.

"It was a question of insulation," said Johnson. "On one small section of roof, we had detailed a rigid insulation form that the workers had to cut. Instead, the contractor proposed putting up the lightweight that gave us the insulation we needed."

Channeled steel did not bend easily to follow roof forms, so tubed steel was used instead, said Shumate's project superintendent Jack Dawson

"Now we have concrete block, stucco and vertical corrugated metal together, and we have to seal it," he said. "It's difficult."

Six towers were designed with colored tiles occasionally interspersed among plainer ones. The colored tiles are lively but bigger than standard and required additional care from tile setters to keep rows and columns straight.

But a change during the project by both the city and state from Universal Building Code 1997 to the stricter International Building Code 2003 made fireproofing necessary.

"That threw a wrench into the work that we haven't had for a long time," said Thompson of the cementitious spray-on fireproofing of girders. "It takes a while and is dirty."

The building already is fully protected by a sprinkler system and fire-damper doors that close to isolate fires, Dawson said.

"We don't typically fireproof schools," Johnson said. "If your building is under a certain square footage and there's an acceptable maximum distance for students to get outside, code determines it is okay not to have fireproofing. The change, which we knew was a possibility, complicated the construction process in terms of schedules, timing and expense. We would have designed the building differently."

"Shumate has taken it on and managed to make it work very well," Johnson added, with the building still on schedule.

Approximately a third of the construction money came from the new Public Schools Facility Authority, which requires that State of New Mexico monies allocated to schools meet more stringent requirements.

Recipients must be accountable for money they get, make sure roofs don't leak, and build classrooms of a certain size with adequate lighting and ventilation, Shumate said.

The rest of the project's funding came from the Albuquerque Public Schools system.

Key Players
Owner: Albuquerque Public Schools
General Contractor: Shumate Construction Inc.
Architect: FBT Architects
Electrical: VA Electric
Mechanical: Grant & Associates Mechanical
Steel: Hughes & Associates
Concrete: Mayan Construction

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