You may know that Cooper & Company is involved in numerous market sectors in the construction industry, but do you know that K-12 is one of our most consistent market sectors. One of the largest market sectors for the construction industry is K-12 educational projects. The K-12 education sector includes all educational buildings for kindergarten through 12th grade as well as school district support buildings.
Cooper & Company has completed over 145 K-12 educational projects across 
the state of Georgia. Some of these projects include Wolf Creek Elementary, Lilburn Middle School Addition, Forsyth County Board of Education, and the Cobb County School District Data Recovery Center.
The Cooper team has completed many successful and award-winning K-12 educational projects. Our firm has been recognized by the Associated General Contractors of Georgia for our outstanding construction performance on Pope High School and Lilburn Middle School. These awards are given to contractors who prioritize and think proactively in areas of safety, occupied spaces, and overcoming particularly difficult challenges. It’s not uncommon, unless the project is new construction, for campuses to be occupied by students and staff during construction.
The Cooper team excels in communication with school officials. One of the reasons we work so well on school projects is our ability to be active listeners and prioritize the students first. We understand that educators’ biggest 
concerns are safety and the ability of having a learning space with little to no disruption. Our firm wants the students to have the best possible learning environment during construction. It’s important that they create lasting learning environments where students, faculty, and staff spend most of their day learning and working.
Additionally, understanding and being flexible for traffic patterns and after school activities is something our team considers important. We know that parent, student, and bus traffic take priorities over material deliveries and job site pours. Therefore, it is critical for us to stay in communication with the administrators to ensure that no student is put in harms way or is denied the opportunity to participate in programs because of construction.
Cooper & Company employs a staff of experienced K-12 construction personnel that understand the tight timelines K-12 projects can have. It’s important to use time wisely before school, after school, and while school is on summer and winter breaks. This is because the available time on campus without students has changed significantly in the past few years. Historically, school systems use to do the majority of their renovation and construction to existing facilities during the summer months. Due to the trend to reduce the amount of days between
each school year, the available days for summer work have changed.
However, our team has learned how to expedite the much of the summer work to be completed during the shortened summer duration. Project Manager, Gary Goodman, completed 1 million dollars of change orders
for Lilburn Middle School during summer break to complete the best renovations for student and staff when school started in the fall. A large part of this project was requested at the last minute and involved our team replacing the brick on the front of a school to provide consistent aesthetics for the location.
Though a lot of our K-12 educational spaces are actual learning spaces, Cooper also has a lot of experience in public education administrative buildings. Cooper & Company has worked on multiple administrative buildings including our current work for the Cobb County School District 
Instructional Support Center. Our firm also recently completed work on the CCSD Data Recovery Center and have built buildings such as the Forsyth County Board of Education.
Cooper & Company enjoys creating the best learning environments for the future leaders of America. We know that these buildings have a significant future impact on all of us.
