Kinnari School

A major educational establishment, Kinnari School, was completed in August 2019 in the city of Järvenpää. The project is a unique example of a highly demanding school project that follows the principles of the new national core curriculum, strict energy requirements and open building.

The project was completed on schedule and significantly under budget by enabling a collaborative environment with a systematic approach to project cost control. The construction of the Kinnari School project was managed by Mestaritoiminta Oy, with Boost Brothers as the construction management expert.

A new way of learning

Kinnari School project was carried out in close collaboration with the Children and Youth Services of the City of Järvenpää. The school is built in accordance with the demands of the new national core curriculum in Finland. This means that the facilities are built to support, among other things, collaborative learning and co-teaching. A large part of the school is reserved for repurposable spaces, that can be transformed according to the needs of the teaching. In addition to this, the school also has multiple classrooms dedicated to traditional ways of teaching, that can also be utilized for various other purposes such as collaborative work or special-needs education.

Innovative project model

A novel project model was developed and utilized to accommodate the client´s needs and to maximize the value-in-use of the project. The new project model is based on the underlying theories of project alliance, open building and user-centered design. The new project model enables an approach that minimizes building subsystem interdependencies to facilitate design flow and seeks to ensure that design decisions enable buildings to change in the future. Both domestic and international feedback has been gathered to support the development of the new model, and the Finnish Government has recommended it as an exemplary model for developing healthy and sustainable living spaces. The model was created in collaboration with Boost Brothers, Mestaritoiminta Oy and the City of Järvenpää.

Phased commissioning

Phased commissioning is a prime example of how open building methods were utilized in Kinnari School project. The commissioning was organized in three distinct phases. In Phase 1, the base building and the enclosed main HVAC systems were systematically inspected and accepted. In Phase 2, the infill spaces were accepted. Since most of the user operations take place in the infill spaces, a separate commissioning phase allowed increased emphasis on the most critical areas from the users’ perspective. Finally, in Phase 3, the building was commissioned as a whole entity. Phased commissioning led to significant improvements in project efficiency, as time and material costs were reduced. The largest benefits, however, came from the increased quality of the project.