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Standardized school design strategy almost complete
Structures built after Cape Dorset and Iglulik will use new model

Northern News Services
Monday, December 14, 2015

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
There are two schools on the radar to be built in the territory but the process of school construction after their completion is expected to change.

"We currently have Cape Dorset and Iglulik in design phase," stated policy and planning director Jodi Durdle-Awa in an e-mail to Nunavut News/North.

Iglulik has been waiting for a high school for a few years, but in 2014 the Department of Community and Government Services (CGS) halted the design process after deciding to develop a standardized school design model.

"The standardized school design strategy is approximately 60 per cent complete. We anticipate this strategy will conclude in summer 2016," said Durdle-Awa.

A standardized design model is one adopted in other Canadian jurisdictions, such as Quebec and Alberta. The intention is to streamline the process of building schools, with shorter timelines from approval to finish, and the benefit of quality control.

"And, hopefully, better cost control," a Community and Government Services official told Nunavut News/North in 2014, adding that keeping quality and costs in line have been a problem in the past.

"It is an approach whereby some components of the typical school design are standardized while still providing some flexibility to address community-specific program needs," stated Durdle-Awa.

"Also each and every building constructed, including schools, is subject to ensuring that site specific conditions, such as type of soils, amount of bedrock, existing topography, allow for economical design - therefore a standardized school design must be flexible enough to allow for design variations to address specific site constraints."

Some of the aspects of the standardized school design discussed to date have been incorporated in the Cape Dorset design-build and the Iglulik design-bid-build project, adds Durdle-Awa.

Iglulik is scheduled to move from the design phase to tender phase in March 2016, with construction scheduled to begin in the fall of 2016.

Cape Dorset is currently scheduled to go to a request for proposal for both design and build in the summer of 2016, with construction scheduled to begin in the fall of 2017.

"Once we complete the standardized school design strategy and achieve final approvals, then subsequent school designs would be based upon this standardized model," said Durdle-Awa.

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