Building for the Future: How Prefabrication Helped Deliver Avon Grove Charter School’s New Upper School

Klover combined BIM coordination, off-site prefabrication, commercial carpentry, exterior cladding, and interior construction to help bring Avon Grove Charter School’s new 83,000-square-foot educational facility to life.

Building a school is about more than constructing classrooms. It is about creating an environment where students can learn, collaborate, compete, and grow for generations to come.

Avon Grove Charter School’s new Upper School was designed to do exactly that. The approximately 83,000-square-foot, two-story educational facility provides permanent classrooms, collaborative learning areas, a full-size gymnasium, and expanded educational spaces while replacing temporary modular classrooms that had accommodated the school’s growth for years.

Working alongside the project’s construction and design partners, Klover provided an extensive commercial carpentry, prefabrication, exterior enclosure, and interior construction package that extended from the building envelope into the finished learning environments.

The result demonstrates what can happen when BIM, prefabrication, logistics, field installation, and commercial carpentry are approached as one coordinated construction process.

Prefabricated Wall Panels Help Accelerate the Building Envelope

A major component of Klover’s work was the prefabrication and installation of the school’s exterior framing.

Rather than constructing the exterior walls entirely piece by piece in the field, Klover manufactured 116 prefabricated light-gauge steel exterior wall panels totaling approximately 26,000 square feet in a controlled off-site environment.

Before fabrication began, Klover used Building Information Modeling (BIM) to coordinate panel geometry, dimensions, connections, interfaces, and architectural requirements.

This digital-to-fabrication workflow allowed many construction details to be addressed before the assemblies reached the jobsite.

The panels could then be manufactured and delivered according to the building’s planned erection sequence, connecting BIM coordination, shop production, transportation, and field installation into a coordinated workflow.

Why Use Prefabrication for Commercial Construction?

Prefabricated wall panels can move significant portions of exterior framing away from the active construction site and into a controlled manufacturing environment.

For Avon Grove Charter School, that meant fabrication could advance while other construction activities continued in the field. Once delivered, crews could erect coordinated wall assemblies rather than constructing each exterior wall entirely at elevation.

This approach helped reduce exterior installation time, improve control over dimensional accuracy, and advance building enclosure, creating better conditions for the interior construction that followed.

Taking Prefabrication One Step Further

The Avon Grove project also gave Klover an opportunity to advance its prefabrication process.

The building incorporated ACM exterior cladding, which requires a carefully coordinated support system. Instead of waiting until the exterior walls were erected to install the ACM support track in the field, Klover coordinated and installed the track directly onto the prefabricated wall panels during shop production.

It was the first time Klover incorporated this system directly into its wall panel fabrication process.

Completing the work in the shop provided greater control over layout, eliminated an additional field operation, and created a ready-to-receive substrate for the ACM cladding once the wall panels were installed.

It is a good example of how Klover approaches prefabrication: not simply by asking what can be built off-site, but what else can be integrated into an assembly before it ever reaches the field.

Coordinating a Complex, Multi-Material Exterior

Avon Grove Charter School’s exterior architecture brought together several distinctive finish materials, including Dri-Design metal panels, Steni stone panels, phenolic wood panels, and ACM cladding systems.

Each system introduced different substrates, attachment requirements, tolerances, and transition conditions.

Because these finishes interfaced directly with the prefabricated exterior framing, coordination needed to begin well before installation.

BIM helped connect architectural requirements with fabrication information so potential conflicts and complex conditions could be addressed earlier in the construction process. In the shop, panels were fabricated horizontally at accessible working heights, allowing framing dimensions and associated components to be checked throughout production.

Once the panels reached the field, coordination continued across openings, elevations, material transitions, substrates, and adjacent construction to help maintain the architectural intent of the building.

From Exterior Enclosure to Interior Construction

Klover’s work did not stop once the school was enclosed.

The company also completed an extensive commercial interior construction and carpentry scope, including interior light-gauge steel framing, drywall, shaftwall assemblies, acoustical ceiling systems, suspended-grid drywall ceilings, in-wall blocking, phenolic wood ceilings, and acoustical wall panels.

That scope extended throughout classrooms, corridors, collaborative spaces, the gymnasium, and other areas of the new school.

Having Klover involved across both exterior and interior construction helped provide continuity as the project moved from enclosure into finished educational spaces. Project management, BIM, prefabrication, and field teams could coordinate conditions across multiple phases instead of approaching each package as an isolated activity.

One of the clearest examples was the building’s phenolic wood system. Used as part of the exterior architectural expression, the material continues into the school’s lobby, creating a visual connection between the exterior façade and interior environment.

Executing that design required careful coordination so the exterior and interior conditions aligned while preserving the architect’s design intent.

Safety Across Shop, Exterior, and Interior Construction

The breadth of Klover’s scope meant its teams were working across multiple construction environments, from off-site panel fabrication and transportation to elevated exterior installation, cladding, framing, drywall, ceilings, and architectural finishes.

Throughout that work, safety remained a central priority.

Klover completed its entire scope on the Avon Grove Charter School project without a single OSHA Recordable incident.

That achievement reflects the planning and coordination required to successfully execute a project involving shop fabrication, logistics, exterior construction, work at elevation, and extensive interior construction.

Building Better Educational Environments Through Collaboration

Avon Grove Charter School’s new Upper School represents an investment in more than a building. It provides students, educators, and the surrounding community with permanent, modern spaces designed to support learning and growth well into the future.

For Klover, the project demonstrates the value of bringing commercial carpentry, BIM coordination, prefabricated wall panels, exterior cladding, interior framing, drywall, ceilings, and field execution together as part of a coordinated construction strategy.

Most importantly, it was a collaborative effort.

Working alongside the project’s construction, design, supplier, and trade partners, Klover helped transform an ambitious educational vision into a finished facility by combining careful planning, innovative prefabrication, quality execution, and a commitment to safety.

It is exactly the kind of project that shows why building smarter before work reaches the field can create greater certainty once construction begins.