Johnson Creek Schools
The Johnson Creek School District selected Maas Brothers Construction as the construction manager for its long-awaited new school project after a competitive proposal and interview process. Designed as a series of five monolithic domes—the first of its kind in Wisconsin, and a first for Maas Brothers—the 109,000 sq. ft. project included a high school and middle school complex. The dome project garnered significant attention due to its unconventional design. The site attracted curious visitors nearly every day of construction, and people continue to visit the school to check out the domes.
Much planning and design went into this $18.9 million project. The architect’s study determined the “outside the box” dome design would cost 20 percent less (a savings of around $8 million) than conventional buildings, plus save thousands each year on energy use. Maas Brothers pre-construction services included developing preliminary budgets, providing constructability analysis and value engineering in cooperation with the owner and architect, developing bid packages, and securing subcontractor bids. A Building Information Modeling (BIM) firm was hired to develop 3D building images of the project. This technology helps our clients save time and money by highlighting potential building conflicts during preconstruction, rather than in the field as the project progresses.
During construction, Maas Brothers managed scheduling, subcontractors and self-performed finish carpentry. The unique structure of the schools—five individual monolithic domes—presented us with new challenges. The domes, which were built simultaneously, include one dome each for the high school, middle school, shared administration and general education space, gym and a cafeteria/vocational education space. A dome construction specialist was contracted to build the concrete-and-rebar domes, which were then connected to each other using traditional building methods of structural steel, precast and membrane roofing. Completed in time for the start of the 2016-2017 school year, the new building offers the schools maximum flexibility, thanks to interior walls that can be moved as needed to rearrange rooms. We were proud to be selected to manage such a high-profile, forward-thinking school construction project.
