Higher Education Construction on a Live Campus: Five Lessons from CWI’s Health and Science Building

Building on an active college campus is a fundamentally different challenge than building on a cleared site. Students are still showing up for class. Faculty are still holding office hours. Buses are running. Emergencies happen. And through all of it, promises are kept, and construction moves forward.

ESI recently completed the College of Western Idaho’s Health and Science Building on the Nampa, ID campus, a 63,000-square-foot, three-story facility now home to nine academic programs serving more than 2,000 students. It was CWI’s first ground-up building, delivered as a progressive design-build project in partnership with architecture firm Cushing Terrell. The project came with more than its share of complexity, and the lessons it produced are already shaping how we approach higher education construction across the region.

Lesson 1: Early Integration Changes Everything

On most projects, trade and supply partners enter the picture after key decisions have already been made. On the Health and Science Building, ESI brought its subcontractors and suppliers into the process at major milestones during preconstruction to weigh in on cost, constructability, and sequencing before commitments were locked in. The relationship between the owner, architect, and contractor provided a strong foundation for the project, and bringing on the trades and suppliers as partners formed a tight team that could take on any challenge.

The payoff came when circumstances changed. During construction, rapid enrollment growth required expanding the building from its original 45,000-square-foot plan to over 60,000 square feet, adding space for three additional academic programs. Because the team had already established shared systems for communication and decision-making, the response was fast and coordinated. Ten thousand square feet of shelled space was programmed, designed, and fully built out in nine months without moving the overall completion date. All nine programs opened simultaneously for the new academic year.

That kind of mid-construction pivot requires a strong partnership built on trust well before the pivot happens.

Lesson 2: Live Campus Logistics Require a Dedicated Daily Focus

Campus construction affects people who didn’t sign up for a construction project. Every phase of work on the Health and Science Building required deliberate planning around the rhythms of an operational college: pedestrian pathways, vehicle and emergency access, bus routes, and the general expectation that students and staff can move through campus safely and predictably.

These weren’t just one-off problems needing quick fixes. It required evolving site logistics plans, daily coordination with campus leadership, and field teams trained to anticipate disruptions rather than react to them. The standard we set for ourselves: if something on campus was affected by our work, we already had a solution in place before anyone noticed the problem.

This lesson is straightforward but bears repeating: intentional and proactive logistics coordination is not overhead, it’s a core component of the overall work.

Lesson 3: Transporting and Installing Specialized Equipment Needs Its Own Plan

The Health and Science Building incorporated active medical equipment relocated from another campus location. This kind of specialized installation sits at the intersection of design, construction sequencing, vendor coordination, and end-user operations. This presented another logistical issue and prompted a conversation between parties that normally wouldn’t interact, much less work together to overcome a complex challenge.

ESI facilitated coordination among design teams, trade partners, vendors, and campus representatives to precisely sequence the equipment transition, without compromising the schedule, quality, or operational requirements of the future learning environment. The outcome was seamless. The process behind it was deliberate and required starting those conversations far earlier than felt necessary at the time.

Healthcare and science facilities projects almost always have specialized equipment with long lead times, custom installation requirements, and stakeholders outside the typical owner-architect-contractor triangle. Plan for that complexity early, or get left with a building with beautiful form but no function.

Lesson 4: Phased Interior Access Demands Constant Trade Coordination

Inside a building under construction, access is easy to overlook until it becomes a crisis. On the Health and Science Building, the phased installation of the main staircase, while maintaining safe movement throughout all levels of the structure, required continuous sequencing adjustments and coordination across multiple trades.

Inspectors, project personnel, and crews all need to move through a building as it’s being built. When that building is three stories, and the primary vertical circulation is mid-installation, the solution requires daily communication and a willingness to adjust as conditions change. This is not unusual on complex projects, but it does require field leadership that treats access planning as a standing agenda item, not an afterthought.

Lesson 5: The First Project Sets the Terms for Everything That Follows

Perhaps the most durable lesson from the Health and Science Building isn’t operational; it’s relational. The systems built during this project, the communication cadence, the integration of trades, the logistics protocols, and the shared problem-solving culture were carried over into ESI’s subsequent work with CWI. The team completed the Horticulture and Agriculture Building and is well underway at the Student Success Center on the Nampa campus and the expansive Micron Academic Center in downtown Boise.

Each project runs more efficiently because of the lessons learned from the last one. In higher education construction, where an institution may be building out a campus over five years or more, the value of a contractor who learns and applies those lessons compounds significantly over time.

Thanks to this approach, the Health and Science Building opened on schedule and, in its first semester, welcomed over 2,000 students across 106 classes. The building works as promised, and the spaces within its walls are being used to train the next generation of the region’s highly skilled workforce.