In Covington, Tennessee, two temporary schools are now days away from being finished and furnished, a feat — from the contractor’s point of view — that must start with the fact the bids were awarded June 26. Plumbing and electrical work started the next week.

Crestview Middle and Crestview Elementary, demolished in a tornado that mangled swaths of Covington March 31, have been recreated in temporary buildings, each 21,000 square feet, in what as late as mid-April was Baltzer Field in Cobb Parr Memorial Park.

The new schools, gleaming white, hard-walled buildings, roofed with PVC membrane sheeting, contain 75 classrooms, enough space to serve 1,300 students and staff for two years.

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Concrete was poured in early July. Next, 4,000 sheets of Sheetrock went up in five days. They were taped and painted by Friday, July 28.

Late last week, toilets (executive-level portable units) were installed in what will be a covered plaza between the structures. That concrete was poured Tuesday, July 25.

Keeping tabs on the fast-moving schedule is Chris Ivie, 36, vice president of ServiceMaster by Cornerstone, the Cordova-based disaster restoration business that has made him a traveling miracle worker of sorts. Instead of the minute hand, he watches the second hard.

“We’re equipped to handle this kind of thing. This is what we do, to the definition,” he says.

He oversaw restoration of Dow Chemical’s facility in Louisiana after Hurricane Ida in 2021, a square mile of factory space with 172 buildings. Closer to home, he managed the restoration of Brighton High School after flooding in 2021 destroyed 45,000 square feet of ceiling tile and flooring. The project took seven days.

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“Each of the jobs has a little different feel. But the principle is the same: There is no time, and people are in a position they didn’t plan to be in,” he said.

Now, Ivie is overseeing a crew of 200-225 people, including seven subcontractors working 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, through the final stretch. Over the weekend, five moved trucks pulled up and started moving in the hundreds of desks, chairs and tables, everything else salvaged from the two demolished schools.

“Our charge was to complete the project in 28 days,” Ivie says. “We have promised it will be done Aug. 10,” he said Wednesday.

By Friday, July 28, he predicted the substantial construction would be done by Monday, July 31.

“We’ll still have minor touchups and final inspections, but the big stuff is all done.”

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Teachers will be allowed in to get their rooms ready shortly.

School starts Aug. 7. 

“Actual construction has progressed at an incredible rate. With approval from state and federal agencies, we fully expect students to be in their classrooms by Aug. 7,” said Rebecca Byrd, director of instruction for Tipton County Schools.

Ivie, a Germantown resident who also has projects in Florida, South Carolina, Kentucky and East Tennessee, is working so many hours, it wasn’t until the middle of last week that he learned the water in his home had been contaminated.

“I’d been drinking it. I kept on because I figured the damage had been done,” he said, he said with a stoic chuckle.

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The job, which in the early stages included work after midnight, is the largest general contracting job ServiceMaster by Cornerstone has done.

Ivie expects it to set the standard for how temporary schools are built in an age of escalating weather disasters.

“The typical solution has been mobile classrooms,” he said.

At best, he says, they are a flawed solution because the ceiling and flooring are often subpar.

Mobile units also do not allow an entire school of students to be together. This project does, he says, and it is served with heat/air conditioning, lighting, city water and sewer.

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Every single school function has had to be rethought and created, including bus lanes, turnarounds and drop-off area for car riders.

School lunches will be transported in in bulk from a neighboring school, plated in a room made from three reconfigured trailers on site and then delivered to students in their classrooms.

There is no gym or cafeteria.

“It’s such a mad scramble but we are where we hoped we would be.”

Chris Ivie
Vice president of ServiceMaster by Cornerstone 

“This wouldn’t be possible without an architect onsite, without out-of-the-box subcontractors that stepped in on short notice, and a school system and county that put a premium on making sure all the kids are taken care of and stay together,” Ivie said.

The Tipton County Schools board awarded $8 million in bids in a special meeting June 26. ServiceMaster was one of two general contractors bidding. It bid $2.9 million.

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Sunbelt Rentals, also a Memphis firm and the parent company of Mahaffey Event & Tent Rentals, won a $4.2 million bid for rented HVAC units and other rentals, which will be in place for 26 months. Jay-ton Construction Co. of Burlison, Tennessee, won the concrete contract at $732,000.

The bid period was seven days.

“Regular contractors are not used to these time restrictions,” Ivie said. “It’s such a mad scramble but we are where we hoped we would be.”

The district expects the expenditures to be reimbursed by FEMA. Ford Motor Co. pledged $500,000.

Charles ‘Chooch’ Pickard, senior architect with A2H Engineers, Architects & Planners, is on the job site several days a week or more, to make decisions in the field to accommodate the timeline.

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“To me, this is an exciting challenge. It’s exciting to be part of this and getting the kids back in school,” he said.

“What we did in two months would normally take a year for the design,” he said.

A2H is also the architect for the two permanent schools Tipton County plans to open in Covington in 2025. To meet the schedule, those designs will have to be done in six months, Pickard said.

“We’ll still be moving in half the time.”

Tipton County Schools initially planned to erect two large tents as replacement schools until the state fire marshal inspected the plans. It turns out that very little about a hastily erected tent meets the fire code required for schools.

It took six to eight weeks to get the new plans approved by the fire marshal. 

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The final product features classrooms off corridors that run the length of the building. Each corridor is certified with a one-hour fire rating.

Any fire that started in a classroom would not burn into the hallways for at least 60 minutes. And the hallways themselves would contain fire for the same time, giving the school time to evacuate.

Every two classrooms, connected by an interior door, have an exit to the outside.

With temperatures in the 90s July 26, the classrooms were cool, powered by 12 30-ton HVAC units set in place by crane days before.

“For perspective, the average house has four- to six-ton units,” Ivie said.

The tent framing went up in early April. Initially, the challenge was building inside it on a site that also slopes two feet.

A2H calculated grade changes inside to accommodate the slope. They show in subtle ramps in the corridors but not in the classrooms because the walls were positioned at the break points.

The schools also both have the new security standards required by federal law.

Managing the job is essentially managing hundreds of tightly connected details, Ivie said, noting that if one contractor falls behind, several more are delayed. 

“None of this is that hard. It’s just corralling the cats to get things done.”