Nestucca CTE Center
O’Brien’s team worked with the Nestucca Valley School District’s (NVSD) to build the Career Technical Education (CTE) Center. Like many rural areas, the Nestucca region of the Oregon Coast faces challenges in providing diverse and accessible educational opportunities for its youth. This new institution seeks to address that gap by offering hands-on opportunities for technical and vocational education tailored to meet the evolving needs of students and industries alike.
Nestucca CTE Center is a bold and forward-thinking facility to revitalize the region’s vocational education and workforce development.
To meet the forward-thinking client’s goals, the building needed to be flexible and adaptable; having the ability to build a tiny home or trailer in the space and provide courses that varied from virtual welding simulators to a full-scale wood shop. With those goals in mind, the team set out to design and build a fully enclosed CTE building that would allow the spaces to be used with flexibility, providing courses and training for students.
As the first step in the project, our team demolished an existing decrepit building onsite that formerly housed the Nestucca Career Technical Education program. We had to be innovative from the beginning of this project because we took away their old space and were building a new space – so we brought the kids over to help learn as part of the entire process. Our Project Superintendent went every Saturday on his own time and helped to teach the CTE students throughout the entire project process.
A primary driver was that the building must be expandable and flexible to adapt quickly to changes in industry driving changes in the CTE program. Set behind the existing high school building for easy student and instructor access, a pre-engineered metal building (PEMB) was erected with a smaller “building within a building” constructed with a wood-framed second story inside the metal shell. This approach provided the warmth of natural wood and was more cost-effective as the price for lumber was declining while at the same time the cost of steel was increasing.
Students and educators have access to basic hand tools donated by O’Brien, as well as cool, cutting-edge technology such as a 3-D laser cutting machine.
The team never loses sight of the fact that all decisions in a school district are made with the intent of betterment for kids, and O’Brien company does what needs to be done in order to create a quality, rewarding product for students and community.
Misty Wharton, Superintendent, Nestucca Valley School District
