Heading back down to the United States, our team was recently involved in a project with the Oakland Board of Schools in New Jersey and with our partners at Tri-State Folding Partitions.
Having done business with the Oakland School district for many years, Tri-State has helped a number of schools in the area with annual preventative maintenance on all their equipment, including partitions, bleachers, basketball backstops, and climbing walls.
In addition to the maintenance, their team has also proudly installed a variety of new equipment including basketball hoops, fold-up divider nets, partitions, and wall pads.
On this particular project, the team at Tri-State worked closely with the Principal and head custodian of Manito Elementary School. As part of the Oakland School District in New Jersey, the school serves approximately 350 students in the close-knit community. Constructed in 1961, the school has only seen three principals tenured in the institution’s front office since its inception, a credit to school’s long-standing commitment to student-focused education.
As part of some recent upgrades, our team was contacted to help the school design and install a completely inclusive wall padding solution for their gymnasium. The padding was requested to cover all of the walls in the gymnasium, which obviously presented our team with a number of challenges.
As in many other rooms, this one was full of switches, outlets and other openings that had to be taken into account during the design process. Our boots on the ground at Tri-State were immediately on-site to take precision measurements for our design team to work with.
In addition to the customization needed to accommodate switches and other outlets, the school had initially requested custom colour configurations on the padding. To match the established colours of the school, the principal originally selected black and red as the colours for the padding but had a change of heart.
Having noticed the accented striping on the gymnasium floor, principal Adam Silverstein quickly requested that the colours be changed to black and grey. Pivoting on the fly, our team was able to communicate effectively with the team at Tri-State and together, we were able to get the colour request taken care of in a timely manner.
As the padding hit the ground in New Jersey after being manufactured by our team, the Tri-State team was on the ground and ready to do what they do best: install with pinpoint accuracy and precision.
Working their way through custom cutouts, their team also took the initiative to install Z clips where the existing partition meets the wall padding, allowing it to be removed when the partition is extended, avoiding damage to both the pad and the folding partition.