The process for the Frank H. Netter School of Medicine, named after a renowned medical illustrator, began in January 2010 and is set to have its first class in August 2013. Following a year of internal study and a six-month feasibility study, construction for the project is projected to take 11 months and will turn a 120,000-sqaure-foot building in to a state-of-the-art medical facility.

The building is set to feature operating and examination rooms, classrooms, student and faculty offices and a morgue. In addition, there will be a 300-seat auditorium, lecture halls and a 100-person multipurpose room with a video feed from the auditorium.

Standing at three stories, the school will be used by students from across academic disciplines, including the School of Nursing and the School of Health Sciences.

The renovated building will connect to Building 1, an 180,000-square-foot space that is home to the schools of health sciences, nursing and education. A 25,000-square-foot atrium will be feature event space and open areas on the first two floors, with the top floor serving as a health sciences library.

"We will train medical students with nursing students and physician assistant students because healthcare more and more is a team activity," said Bruce Koeppen, founding dean at the Frank H. Netter School of Medicine.

The school will focus on training medical students to enter the primary care field, since according to Koeppen; there is a severe shortage for primary care physicians.

"Right now if you look at the national statistics about 15 percent of current medical students are planning a career in primary care," said Koeppen. "We hope that 50 percent or more of our graduates will go into primary care."

With studies indicating medical field salaries are lower and work hour control is less in the field, students are choosing to go in to more specialized fields.

The medical school will start recruiting students in the fall, with 60 spots available to be filled.

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Claudio Bazzano knows these struggles all too well. He sees them from two perspectives: as president of the Connecticut School Buildings and Grounds Association and executive director of facilities for Hartford Public Schools.

Formed in 1974, the association is a Bloomfield, Conn.-based professional trade organization that works with school facilities directors, custodial and maintenance supervisors, school business officials and suppliers to share knowledge and provide continued training in areas that affect the education industry.

Bazzano has been in the maintenance and facilities end of the education industry since 1998. With 43 schools and two administrative buildings, Hartford Public Schools spans more than 5.5 million square feet over 200 acres and serves 24,000 students. Bazzano was promoted to his current position in July 2011, following stints as director of buildings and grounds and floor mechanic.

While he said he loves what he does, a lack of funding has made his job more difficult.

“The current economic climate has made it difficult to increase or even maintain maintenance budgets,” he says. “The prices of commodities and services rise every year. A zero budget increase actually results in a 2 to 3 percent reduction in capacity. And there has also been a rise in unfunded legislative mandates, both at the state and federal level and all of these mandates have the safety of the school community at heart. Unfortunately, the timing has created an additional hardship to budgets.”

With the average age of the U.S. school around 40 years old, maintenance and facilities departments have their work cut out for them, especially when it comes to achieving energy cost savings. Since most older schools lack efficient energy-control systems, Bazzano said the following tasks will often show an immediate return on investment: lighting retrofits by replacing T-12 with T-8 and T-5 lamps; adding occupancy sensors to hallways, large instructional areas, gymnasiums, auditoriums and classrooms; and adding LED lighting and timers for parking lots.

“The energy efficiency and reduction industry is evolving every day,” he said. “For new construction and renovation projects, equipment is being developed at such speeds that equipment accepted for construction and design today may already be considered outdated by the time construction is completed. Generally, the timeline for new construction or a renovated school project is 12 months for design and procurement, and 18 to 24 months for construction.”
A HweHe sdacomputerized automated energy management system (EMS), he said, ties all the energy-efficiency initiatives together. Electromechanical systems can be preprogrammed to meet occupants’ needs and ramped down when schools are empty, often for up to 12 hours a day. The system can also grow as new buildings are added or renovated.

Preventative Maintenance Tops List

Whether a facilities department oversees an old or a new school, Bazzano said preventative maintenance should top the to-do list.

“Preventative maintenance is usually associated with capital-intensive industries where equipment runs 24 hours a day,” he said. “The loss of equipment due to failure then has direct cost to the company. Since schools are generally unoccupied for half the day, a predictive type of maintenance schedule may be a good business move.”

Implementing a predictive maintenance program can be fairly simple provided there is adequate funding. The task becomes cumbersome, Bazzano said, when upper management has to be persuaded to throw in extra funding for this type of maintenance.

“In a manufacturing setting, any equipment failure that slows or stops production can be easily quantified,” he said. “In a school, the loss of certain mechanical components usually results in a loss of comfort, but can the loss of comfort be quantified in a reduction in learning?”

The basic strategy in preventative maintenance is to prolong the useful life of capital assets and lower overall costs. In general terms, the process is to identify the work to be done,
determine the frequency of the work, develop a schedule and set aside funding for labor and material.

“At the risk of stating the obvious,” Bazzano said, “the most important PM items relate to life-safety systems. This includes ensuring that sprinkler systems, fire alarms, fire extinguishers and emergency generators are inspected and maintained is critical to occupant safety. Following these, we then enter the areas such as boilers, HVAC equipment, compressors and elevators.”

Though Bazzano’s days are filled to the brim, he said he loves his career.

“The knowledge that you can be responsible for the safety and well-being of 24,000 children is staggering,” he said. “That concept is what drives me to continue to expand my knowledge of structural and mechanical building systems, in addition to all of the environmental dangers that can occur each and every day. We are all born with two things — what we do best and what we love to do. If we are truly fortunate, they are both the same.”

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The cost to fix just the high priority items is about $10.4 million, according to district manager Richard E. Ziegler.

“Our schools are in rough shape,” said Ziegler.

Ziegler presented photos to a school board meeting showing the damage at several schools including roofs at five buildings that needed replacement and steam piping at Nathan Hale Elementary School that could fail anytime, according to Ziegler.

Nathan Hale Elementary is the most urgent project, said Ziegler. The school currently has 91-year old boilers that are in danger of collapsing. The pipes are also so thin from age that workers are unable to put a pipe wrench on them. The estimated cost just to fix critical issues at Nathan Hale is about $1 million, explained Ziegler.

“If there’s that much disrepair, they have to close a building,” said mayor Leo Diana. “I don’t know where this $10 million is going to come from.”

School officials have presented the issues to the school board back in 2011 — giving them a list of critical repairs and replacements. The board of directors took no action that left the proposal dead and the schools unable to make the necessary changes.

Board of directors’ members said they understood the schools’ needs, but wanted a more comprehensive plan of improvement, answers to questions about state reimbursement and more input from taxpayers before signing off on the improvements.

School board member and co-chair of the building and sites committee, Michael Crockett said the state would not reimburse the requested repairs unless they are part of an entire building’s “like-new” renovation.

The school board currently has almost all the funds — all but $35,000 — to make some improvements at schools. A project is underway to remove carpeting at Verplanck Elementary School that the fire marshal has deemed a tripping hazard. Carpet removal and flooring changes must be done before the beginning of the 2012 school year in August, said school officials.

Parents attended the presentation by Ziegler and were disappointed with the school district’s lack of action when it came to critical improvements.

“We have to start spending money,” said Stephanie Knybel, who has a child in the school system. “We have to get it across to the board of directors.”

School officials are still pushing for funds to renovate the schools in dire need of repair but will have to wait until the proposal is listed as a potential spending item on the ballot, as of now there is no predicted time for the improvements.

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NEW LONDON, Conn. — The largest classroom at Connecticut College earned LEED Silver certification after the completion of remodeling work.

Bill Hall’s Silfen Auditorium, which seats up to 150 people, was renovated in 2008 and brought up to date with tools for interactive teaching and learning, officials said.

"Our goal with all new construction projects on campus is to improve the learning environment while also working to reduce the College’s environmental impact," Vice President for Administration Ulysses Hammond, who oversees campus construction, said. "We want to maintain the College’s position as a model for environmental stewardship and as a resource for environmental education."

The classroom is named in honor of David and Lyn Gordon Silfen, alumni of the class of 1967, who funded the renovation.

KBE Building Corp. served as the construction manager of the project, with Ellenzweig Associates as the designer.

The auditorium is one of the few campus locations that can accommodate a large group and is also used for special events, community presentations and lectures, according to school officials.

Silfen Auditorium was one of the first major construction projects completed after the adoption of a college-wide green building policy in 2005.

A quarter of the total building materials were manufactured using recycled materials, and about half of the building materials were manufactured regionally.

The Forest Stewardship Council certified more than 95 percent of the total wood used for the project and 100 percent of the applicable equipment is Energy Star-rated.

All adhesives, sealants, paints, coatings, carpets, furniture and seating are low-emitting materials that reduce indoor air contaminants and more than 63 percent of the construction waste generated on site was diverted from landfills, school officials reported.

The College has also applied for LEED certification for its 10,000-square-foot fitness center, which opened in 2009.

Construction also began this month on the school’s new Science Center, which includes a complete renovation of the college’s oldest building and a large addition, with hopes for LEED certification for the entire project.

"Connecticut College is committed to long-term sustainability, and we are proud to have our green building practices recognized," said Connecticut College President Leo Higdon. "Silfen Auditorium is an important learning space in our community, and its renovation has served as a model for other environmentally-sensitive construction projects on campus."

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