TRAVERSE CITY AREA PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Miller-Davis Company was selected to oversee the construction of Michigan’s first purpose-built public school devoted to the Montessori method. The $22M project, for Traverse City Area Public Schools, required the daily coordination of 50 site members and 10 subcontractors, over 160 hours of planning and progress meetings, and navigating the industry’s pandemic-related challenges.

The 84,000-square-foot, two-story school features a pod classroom structure, a science lab, an art room, a Spanish room, a media center spanning two floors, a greenhouse, a full-size gymnasium, and music rooms.  The facility houses between 500 and 550 students and serves toddlers through eighth graders.

This project overcame pandemic-related supply chain shortages and labor scarcity to meet the district’s goals. The summer of 2022 was particularly challenging for the on-site project team, working with a compressed schedule and tight project footprint to complete concrete and paving work while the building envelope was still being constructed. Miller-Davis’ site team demonstrated exceptional proficiency in coordinating and effectively communicating the site work sequence. Leveraging state-of-the-art technology, Miller-Davis established a common data environment accessed by over 130 project members to manage drawings, RFIs, submittals, and additional project data in one single source of truth. A meticulously tailored zone plan and schedule was also devised exclusively for the summer work, which garnered unanimous approval and adoption from all project stakeholders driving project success.

Miller-Davis Company was also selected to oversee Traverse City Area Public Schools’ West Senior High Athletics Complex, Transportation Facility Project, and is currently assisting Diekema Hamann Architecture and Engineering with the district’s 2024 facility assessment.