It's no small task to bring a 45- to 50-year-old high school building into the 21st Century.

The process that led to the $36 million addition/renovation project in Muskego, Wis., began with a long look at the existing school and the surrounding community.

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"Right from the beginning, we worked closely with the administration, the board and a group of citizens to evaluate what could be done," said Rich Tennessen, client executive with Eppstein Uhen Architects Inc. in Milwaukee.

He said that one option was to build a new, 1,000-student school and continue using the existing school at a capacity of 1,000 students. But the prospect of dividing the community into two schools made many area residents uncomfortable. Cost was also a concern.

Rich Kubly, project manager for general contractor Hunzinger Construction Co. and a Muskego resident, added, "You want to make sure you give your client, the public and the school district a good product, yet you don't want to go in there and blow everyone away with the high budget."

Tennessen said his firm's job was to take stock of the existing building and determine its assets and what could be reused. "We ultimately came up with a plan of renovation and addition to give them the space they needed and minimize the cost," he added.

Ground broke on the project in April 2002.

Bob Vajgrt, project manager for Eppstein Uhen, said the additions included a fine arts wing and auditorium, two areas of classrooms, a cafeteria and an athletic portion with a gymnasium and locker rooms. "We created a new entry area and a new administrative office area, and we relocated the library to a new space," he said.

Vajgrt added that the additions grow from the existing building "at all points of the compass."

Working safely in an occupied building - with students, staff, parents and visitors coming and going throughout the day - required planning, proper sequencing and cooperation by the entire team of architects, contractors and the city.

"We tried to isolate the new additions from the existing school and we did that work during the school year," Kubly said. "When school let out in summer 2003, we went in and did the renovations, which was a huge undertaking."

Getting all the renovation work done during the students' summer break meant working three shifts for three months. Two shifts were required for another four months.

"We had to foresee as many obstacles as we could and figure out how we were going to address them," Kubly said. The planning phase included two meetings with city inspectors prior to the beginning of the summer work to set up an inspection schedule and to raise as many issues as possible in advance of the work.

One of the major elements of the project was the removal and replacement of the existing building's MEP and HVAC systems.

"We sat down with all of the contractors on the MEP and HVAC so they could get an idea of the flow of the project," Kubly said. "We told them this is where you will be working until this point and then we have to send another guy in right behind you."

The project's designers were also an integral part of the communication loop.

"We worked with the community and the school board, and we also had to work with the state and with the city planning commission to get all the approvals in line and done quickly - a lot quicker than other projects," Vajgrt said.

Eppstein Uhen took an additional step to ensure constant communication.

"We stationed a full-time representative in the field who had the knowledge and authority to make decisions when the contractor needed answers back immediately," Tennessen said. "That really helped expedite things."

Kubly said everything worked out. "There were dates we just couldn't move," he added. "School was going to start in early September and it just didn't matter if the weather had been bad for us or if we had hit bad soils."

A small issue popped up in the summer work by way of asbestos in the walls and ceilings of the old structure.

"The owner did a wonderful job abating all the asbestos possible before we started," Kubly said. "Then we had an asbestos contractor onboard who could come in on a moment's notice.

"We had him come in during Christmas and spring breaks to abate anything we knew about. After that we had a specific plan of attack. If we found something that might contain asbestos, we would spray it orange and have him come in and confirm it and remove it."

Everyone knew the procedure and who was to be called should any asbestos be found.

Although the summer work schedule was the most intense, some of the school-year work also presented scheduling issues.

"Just the fact of getting construction traffic and deliveries onto a school site took some coordination," Kubly said. "There were times we had to have steel erected on a Saturday so that we could lay it down at a time when the parking lot would be empty."

Working around a bustling school may have been the biggest construction issue, but from a design perspective, working with the existing structure was the biggest concern.

Tennessen said architects needed "to create a plan that took advantage of every existing asset. The gym is one example of trying to think creatively. There were actually two smaller gymnasiums in the building and we decked the high space and created science classrooms."

Both the new structure and the renovations to the old structure were done with an eye to avoiding an overly institutional feel, while still creating spaces that would hold up to daily pounding.

"You try to build your classrooms and corridors out of masonry block and then maybe a high-impact drywall," Kubly said. "You want to give the taxpayers the best bang for their buck but not make it too institutional."

That includes features such as lockers made of heavy-gauge metal and exterior doors hung with durable, piano hinges.

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