Lanaar Elementary School

The project

Lanaar Elementary School is a private school in North Miami Beach expanding its campus to serve a growing student body. The work spans new construction, site improvements, and the coordination with the city and county that a school campus requires, from traffic and pedestrian safety at the street to the approvals that allow a building to open for its intended use.

Why it is demanding

Schools build rarely and operate every day. A campus expansion has to be designed, permitted, and delivered around an academic calendar, with children on site, under Florida's educational facility standards and a municipal approval process that touches everything from drop-off lanes to signalized crossings. The board and administration are educators, not developers, and the contractor, architect, and consultants do this every day. That imbalance is exactly where an owner's representative earns the fee.

What Aventra does

Aventra serves as owner's representative to the school: managing the design team, contractor, and consultants on the owner's behalf; reviewing scope, budget, and pay applications; coordinating permitting, inspections, and certificates of occupancy with the city and county; and reporting to the board in plain language so decisions can be made quickly and on the record. The principal's prior experience delivering education facilities for Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the Archdiocese of Miami, and the State of Florida informs every step.

What an owner should take from it

For an institution, the most valuable thing an owner's representative provides is continuity: one senior person who holds the whole picture from design through closeout, so that nothing is lost between the contractor's punch list, the expediter's permit file, and the board's next meeting.

Talk to us about owner's representation for your school or institution, or explore our South Florida practice and all projects.