By Tony Illia

Tattooed construction workers wearing sleeveless shirts steadily toil in the hot, heavy air north of the Gulf of Mexico as they lift and labor to build the new 71-acre Bossier Parish Community College in northwestern Louisiana. Situated east of Shreveport, across the Red River, the groundbreaking 10-building, 348,055-sq-ft design-build campus marks a unique approach to state college construction.

Bossier Parish Community College was a pilot program created in 1966 to gauge the need for two-year commuter colleges throughout the state. It opened in the fall of 1967 with 101 students and eight instructors. During its first dozen years of operation, the junior college provided transferable credits to a four-year college or university. However, in the fall of 1979, the college began granting two-year associate degrees and its enrollment has skyrocketed since then.

The college today has over 4,250 students, 44 academic/training programs and 300 employees squeezed into 139,000 sq ft of facilities spread throughout the city. The college pays roughly $1.4 million annually in rent and conditions lately have become so crowded that the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools told the college to upgrade its facilities or face possible loss of accreditation. "We’re maxed-out on space," says Tom Carleton, college chancellor. "We’ve used up every square inch available. We’ve literally had to clean out closets to place teachers and now we’ve been forced to turn away new programs because there’s no room left for students."

In crisis mode, the state stepped in and lent a helping hand on May 31, 2001, by creating a nonprofit corporation called Campus Facilities Inc. (CFI). It charged the organization with financing and building a new college campus lickety-split. Subsequently, the Louisiana Local Government Environmental Facilities and Community Development Authority jointly issued $55 million worth of 25-year tax-exempt bonds to underwrite the project. The state agreed to pay off the bond debt from its general fund with a $4.1-million annual allocation.

For $500,000, the state acquired the school’s future site along U.S. Highway 80, just west of the Interstate-20/220 intersection in Bossier City. It now is leasing the property back to Campus Facilities Inc. free of charge. However, title to the buildings are being held by CFI until the bonds are repaid in full. At that time, they will be transferred to the college’s governing parent, the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, at no cost.

	Groundbreaking campus is quickly taking shape.

Louisiana state-funded projects typically undergo a design-bid-build process overseen by the office of Facility Planning and Control. All publicly funded jobs must first be introduced in the governor’s budget then receive legislative approval, a process which lends itself to politicking. This traditional procurement method often can be slow and tedious, taking up to seven times longer than a design-build delivery approach. "Normally, capital construction projects are very lengthy and political," says J. Kevin McCotter, CFI’s president. "With this [design-build] process, we put together alternative financing while forming a cooperative endeavor agreement with the state. It has allowed us to build an entire community college campus in just 33 months."

Under the state’s capital outlay process, a college campus of this size would take 20 years to finish. But as a nonprofit corporation, CFI had the flexibility to issue request-for-qualifications for design-build teams, which it did on Aug. 23, 2001. Submissions were judged on the teams’ experience, technical abilities, construction capability and organization, among other criteria. On Sept. 28, 2001, Shreve Land Construction, a division of Brice Building Co. Inc., Birmingham, Ala., along with Slack-Alost-McSwain & Associates Architects, Shreveport, landed the $51.3-million cost-plus contract, which has a fee component for architectural services.

"The nonprofit allowed us to establish the ground rules by which the project would be administered," says McCotter. "Based on our knowledge of design-build, we felt that it offered the type of speed and efficiency that could best meet our needs."

CFI was able to circumvent the state’s normal practice of funding design before construction can begin. In this instance, bidding on the foundation and structural steel packages started as the final drawings were being finished. The accelerated schedule also moved up the completion date, saving money the college spent on rent payments.

This project marks the first time that an entire college campus has been built from the ground up in Louisiana. It also is the largest state-backed job since the Louisiana State University’s Medical Center at Shreveport opened in 1969. "The original campus masterplan called for a series of smaller buildings," says Carl M. Bantle, CEO of Shreve Land Construction. "One of the first things we looked at was minimizing the number of structures needed."

Simple Plan

CFI’s original plans specified several distinctive-looking one-and two-level buildings. But to capture more space and eliminate the need for construction of an additional structure, the design-build team went with some three-story buildings. Shreve Land and Slack-Alost-McSwain also chose structurally similar buildings for time and cost savings, but varied the site orientation and facades to give them a different appearance.

	Hands-on team keeps project on fast-tracked schedule.

The two-phase project, which broke ground on Sept. 2002, consists of 10 steel-framed structures with block walls and a combination of exterior finishes ranging from precast concrete and brick to EIFS and stucco. The new campus will have a two-story, 49,550-sq-ft library/administration building; a three-story, 49,550-sq-ft health/natural sciences building; an 18,165-sq-ft single-level, double-height auditorium; and a three-story, 48,600-sq-ft business/computer-science/liberal arts building. There also is a three-story, 48,600-sq-ft community education/workforce development building; a three-story, 48,600-sq-ft behavioral and social sciences/math building; a two-story, 45,845-sq-ft student activities building; and a single-level, 40,085-sq-ft athletics/physical education building. The campus also has a maintenance building and a central service plant.

The buildings are clustered in a horseshoe configuration with a ring road encircling the campus. The three-story buildings visually anchor each corner of the college and are separated by lower-level structures. Between buildings, there is a network of steel canopied walkways that provide pedestrian shade, plus a landscaped student area at the campus center. "Almost half of the campus’ square footage is in traditional classrooms, with the other half in unique spaces," says Michael A. Alost, vice president of Slack-Alost-McSwain. "But the classrooms are flexible and can be converted."

The four classroom buildings have a load-bearing exterior frame with minimal columns and sheer walls, enabling the interiors to be adapted for different uses if needed. There also is a building pad at the end of the horseshoe opening that provides up to 60,000 sq ft for future growth.

Blocked Out

Speed wasn’t the only challenge. The site is located under the flight path of nearby Barksdale Air Force Base, home of B-52 bombers. The 185,000-lb planes measure 185 ft wide and 159.4 ft long and have eight jet engines. Having such massive aircraft roaring overhead meant adding engineering to create a quiet campus learning environment. "Stopping low frequency noise with architecture is very difficult, says Alost. "So we tried to make all of our design choices serve more than one function."

The design-build team selected heavy block exteriors, which makes construction quick and cost-effective while helping to dampen sound. In addition, double-insulated windows were used to deal with harmonic vibration and the buildings have pitched metal roofs that refract noise. Extra layers of drywall were added underneath to serve as sound buffers. Selecting block and metal materials also meant minimal maintenance for the college. The campus design keeps everything clean and functional with no exterior painting or exposed wood.

But the site once was a river bottom and now consists of sand and mud, which presented other challenges. Covered with 2,000 locust trees and thorn bushes, the site looked like an "old cow pasture," Alost says. After grubbing and clearing, roughly 200,000 cu yd of soil was imported to raise the campus elevation for proper drainage. And to reinforce the riverbed subsurface, the design-build team used wood friction piles, similar to telephone poles. The buildings sit atop roughly 2,300 such piles, measuring 14 in. in diameter and 40 ft long. The woodpile alternative proved cost-effective versus steel and concrete. Despite concerns about potential rotting, the specially treated wood piles are in an airtight environment that prevents decay after they are driven into the ground.

	Three-story buildings anchor campus corners.

While bad weather is a normal part of any construction project, it can take on a special meaning in Louisiana. The winter months also bring hurricane season. Although Bossier City is too far north to feel any real impact from storms rolling off the Gulf of Mexico, it still experiences residual effects. As a result, heavy rain supersaturated the project site last December and this February creating ankle-deep mud. Shreve Land was forced to temporarily stop work and scrape and pile mud in mounds 6 ft high so that the site could properly dry before redistributing the soil. Site conditions and bad weather aside, the project, which will employ 300 workers at the height of activity, has gone smoothly. The majority of the new college should open by December, followed by the gymnasium and theater in February 2005.

The project completion will come just in the nick-of-time. Next year, the state of Louisiana is implementing stiffened university admissions standards, requiring minimum grade point averages as opposed to its previous open-door policy. The toughened entrance requirements are expected to push more students into the state’s community colleges, which are now bracing for an enrollment boom. By conservative estimates, Bossier Parish Community College expects to see a 20% increase in enrollment during its first full year as a new campus. However, the new facility will have capacity for 8,000 full-time students, enabling the college to double its current enrollment and add new programs.

"The design-build concept has worked exceptionally well. We are building a complete campus from start to finish in less than three years, which is unheard of in the state of Louisiana," says Thomas C. Williams, vice chancellor for finance and administration. "Basically, we have been here for 35 years, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a college campus from scratch."

The author is a Las Vegas-based correspondent for The McGraw-Hill Cos. He regularly reports on design and construction industry issues.

All photos courtesy of Shreve Land Construction

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