Material Efficiency

Christopher Huckabee, AIA

Christopher Huckabee, AIA, is president and CEO of Huckabee & Associates, an architectural and construction management firm specializing in school construction.

The firm has in-house engineering and construction services where it provides program management and turnkey delivery. The firm offers full interior planning and furniture design. Other services include public relations planning, from the original bond establishment through the entire construction process, Web site development and newsletters to promote to taxpayers what its clients are doing.

Huckabee is the co-author of “Are You Building a School or A Liability,” a guide to using total masonry construction in public schools.

Q: What is Total Masonry Construction and why do you advocate so strongly for its use in building K-12 schools?

A: It’s kind of an interesting story. I didn’t realize I was an advocate. We’ve always done it that way. It’s something my father established in the ’60s and maybe we just didn’t change. When others started looking at faster and cheaper materials, we kept building the same type of building. That is, solid masonry, both interior and exterior.

In the mid-90s I was asked to present at a conference about why we built so differently, why we were designing using these unique materials. Candidly, I didn’t know we were unique. I was asked to find another firm that designed predominately in masonry and we couldn’t find one. We found plenty of firms that did some masonry, but none that felt it was the right material for schools on every single project.

The reason I advocate it today is I think more architects and owners should be selecting the material. We got into a lot of re-build in the late ’90s where we helped school districts rebuild their facilities. Not necessarily old facilities, but buildings that were having mold and indoor air quality problems, or high maintenance problems. They were spending huge dollars rehabbing facilities in the summer time. Some of these buildings were only four or five years old. We helped one school district totally rebuild an 18-month-old school. To me it was shocking.

Most school districts and taxpayers expect the facilities to last for a very long time. Most are financed for 30 years and the schools that are being built aren’t lasting that long. We realized there was a need to educate the buyers, the school districts and architects, and say, “We really can do a lot better than we are doing.” It’s about how long the facility is going to last, what it’s going to be used for and how serviceable it will be over the life of the building.

Q: Why not tilt-up delivery? It is very low-to-no maintenance and can last decades.

A: There are several issues with tilt-up. We had clients who were asking for tilt-up. We actually bid four projects that we drew completely in tilt-up and completely in masonry and compared them side-by-side in an open bid market. In every case the masonry turned out to be less expensive. Aesthetically, the masonry looked better. These were double-wide masonry walls as opposed to a single-wide tilt-up wall. There was significant difference in insulation value and maintainability. These were publicly bid projects where we allowed the contractor to bid both time and money, and in every case the masonry was less expensive and the time was bid to be the same.

Q: What might be a first cost and a life-cycle cost for a 250,000-square-foot high school using total masonry construction?

A: Today most of our high school models are 2,500 students and they are closer to 400,000 square feet. A facility that large is going to be in the neighborhood of $50 million. That’s about $125 per square foot, plus all the elements that go with athletics.

Q: What can existing schools do to address mold?

A: The key is keeping a building dry. That seems obvious, but in some areas that means controlling humidity, not just water. Most people don’t realize that mold will grow on anything – concrete, brick, paper. The key is the ease of clean- up when you do have it. Say you’re going to have a school for 50 years. In that time you are probably going to have some kind of moisture event; a roof will leak, plumbing will break, windows seals will fail. With the right ingredients, you’ll get mold. It’s not about making sure you’ll never have mold; that’s not practical. It’s how do you address it once you have it. The real solution to mold is Lysol. The problem we see is that many buildings are built with materials that can’t be simply cleaned. You are looking at a teardown, hauling off material and replacing it. That’s where the cost comes in. It’s more expensive than finding the leak, stopping it, drying the wall out, and going back to teaching class.

Q: Why do you emphasize the type of materials selected for the exterior?

A: Because the exterior is the most attacked area. When we study buildings that fail we find that the walls and roof are the failure point. The buildings were constructed of materials that would not withstand moisture events. A lot of people think the HVAC system is a carrier for mold and other problems. We haven’t really seen that. I know it happens, but what we’ve seen is that the roof and walls haven’t been specified with materials that withstand moisture. We find brick and masonry stands up well. Masonry is forgiving. If you have moisture, you can find where the problem is and clean it up and go back to work.

Q: How do you best design schools to ensure “material efficiency?”

A: First, designers must understand their materials. Most materials are standardized. Most come in a standard dimension unique to that material. A sheet of plywood comes in a four-foot width. That’s industry standard. If I need a sheet of plywood and I design it 3 foot 8 inches, it’s going to require the contractor to cut 4 inches off of every sheet and throw it in the trash. If 4 feet worked the same, it would allow me to pull it straight off the bin and fit it to the wall – no cutting, no waste, and maximizing my contractor’s time and my client’s money. That can be applied to any product.

The second part of saving materials is that we know that our building will be here for 50 years and if we are selecting material we don’t have to tear out and replace, that will add to the bottom line.

Q: What are some examples of good and bad construction techniques?

A: The best construction techniques are what I call redundancy. Where we are designing multiple levels of protection into our detailing and our construction. That recognizes that material may not perform at 100 percent all the time, but the multiple levels of protection will give you more protection. We can design fail-safe elements into the construction. That’s what I call a “best practice.”

Q: What materials and systems do not perform well?

A: It’s a durability factor. Materials that don’t perform well include things that have to be cleaned using harsh chemicals – what I call “overly” clean; requiring the janitorial staff to take extraordinary steps. It could be a number of things, but things that stain easily are paper-based. Those are the materials we try to stay away from.

Q: Can you provide an overview of life cycle costs?

A: When we started getting focused on the fact that we were one of the only firms doing masonry construction as a standard, we looked at various groups who had done life-cycle studies. We’ve found it hard to get accurate data from a school district. They typically employ their maintenance across a district, not to an individual campus.

We want a building to last approximately 60 years and from there we apply changes to take that further, if the client wants. What we’ve done is analyze what our clients’ budgets are and how they can cut down their daily costs on cleaning walls and floors. We use the masonry inside our buildings as well, so we don’t have to paint the walls of our building.

Q: How do you approach a renovation or remodel of a school not built using total masonry construction?

A: The first thing we do is air quality studies. We’ve found that a lot of buildings have air quality issues that people didn’t realize. We have to check for mold. Several times we’ve done studies and found we have higher levels of mold from buildings built with paper-based products. In a building constructed with total masonry construction, we know we can go in and clean up mold. If it isn’t built that way, we know we’ll have to do demolition.

Q: When it comes to construction management what are some best practices to apply?

A: We do program management where we augment the standard services of an architect with a full-time staff at a client’s location. We are not trying to play traffic cop to the contractor. We are making sure that the contractors are getting the answers they need to deliver the right product.

One of the things we’ve found is that the selection of subcontractors is critical. You can have the best contractor, but you have to have the right personnel to put on the job.

Q: With such an extensive practice in Texas, have you noticed any trends in K-12 school design in the Lone Star state?

A: We are seeing a lot more technology-focused designs. We have found that buildings have huge impacts on student learning; how we create the lighting in the classroom, for instance. We are seeing the school as more of a teaching tool. We’ve seen more advancement in five years than I’ve seen in my entire career.