The Best Seats
In The House

We take in a select number of tradeshows and off-site industry events each and every year across both Canada and the United States. One such event that we look forward to each and every year is put on by the Ontario Association of School Business Officials (OASBO) and that is their Operations, Maintenance and Construction Workshop (OMC).

Typically held in a beautiful location, the show is a treat to visit and is a chance for us to connect with familiar faces and meet others we have not yet had the pleasure.

One of our recent projects landed us in coastal New England, home of chowder, warm hospitality and some of the world’s most formidable sports franchises. While the region spans a total of six diverse U.S. states, this project took place in the picturesque state of Maine.

Located in Westbrook, a suburb of Portland, is the Spring Harbor Hospital, a 100-bed non-profit psychiatric hospital offering services for both children and adults.

Part of Maine Behavioral Healthcare, the facility has three adult units totalling 60 beds, a child unit with 14 beds, an adolescent unit with 14 beds and a 12-bed unit for patients with developmental disorders.

After some unfortunate water damage to certain areas of the hospital, the facility was undergoing some fairly heavy-duty renovations. During the process, stakeholders from within the organization got in contact with members of our team in search of fire-rated wall padding for one of the rooms in the hospital.

America’s game is played on diamonds of all shapes and sizes across North America. As one of the continent’s most popular sports, with an estimated 14 million participants in 2017, the need to ensure these spaces are safe for play by participants of all ages could not be more apparent.

While for some of us, grounding balls or catching pop-flies on a dusty old diamond in a former hay field was a rite of passage. For others in larger communities, well-groomed infields, pitching mounds and green outfields are more of what some are accustomed to.

In a game where so much attention is paid to the small round projectile, player safety can become an oversight. As we are in the heat of baseball season, we wanted to take the opportunity to showcase a few products aimed at keeping your diamond and players safe for many seasons to come.

We proudly spent the better part of this week spending time on Canada’s beautiful east coast for an event that many in our industry look forward to, the New Brunswick Association of School Business Officials’ (NBASBO) Annual General Meeting . Acting as a branch of the Association of School Business Officials (ASBO), the New Brunswick affiliate is dedicated to the development of each member by creating professional growth and communication within this fast-paced industry.

With campuses in both Vancouver and Kelowna, the University of British Columbia (UBC) is the province’s oldest and most established post-secondary institution. With a strong background in scientific advancements, the Vancouver campus is located a mere 10km from downtown and is home to roughly 65,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students across its two campuses.

In addition to housing the world’s largest cyclotron in the school’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, it is also home to the Thunderbirds, representing UBC’s student athletes, with teams in football, basketball, soccer, rugby, swimming and baseball. As part of a complete redesign to the Thunderbirds’ baseball park, our team was enlisted through our partners at RecTec Industries to lend a hand with the seating and customized padding for the stadium.

You’ve done your research, tested a few different products, and have finally chosen a heavy-duty vinyl gym floor cover for your facility. During the process, you have assessed the prospective use of the cover, what you expect from it, and are expecting to save thousands in possible damages and perhaps even earn a little extra from your cover during its life.

Choosing the right floor covering system can often be the hardest part, but now that you have the cover in your facility, proper operation is the key to success moving forward.

Located in eastern Nebraska lies the small town of Columbus, an area rich with history and located close to Omaha, the state’s largest city.

Much like Omaha, Columbus was originally a pioneer town, offering early settlers excellent land for crops and access to the Loup and Platte rivers. Today, Columbus is a tight-knit community of roughly 22,000 residents that boasts over 20 city parks and public facilities offering residents the very best the area has to offer.

As part of some upgrades to one of the city’s largest parks, municipal officials reached out to our team through our partners at Crouch Recreation in Nebraska. Dubbed the “picnic capital of Nebraska,” Pawnee Park boasts over 150 acres of space along the Loup River that has become a favourite family location among visitors and residents alike.

Long known as the heart of any school, the gymnasium means much more than a place in which to play sports for many students and members of the community. These facilities are now hubs for meetings, assemblies, athletic competition and community events. As such, more schools and other facilities are quickly recognizing the branding power these areas possess.

In addition to customized flooring, score boards and bleachers, facility operators often look to the permanent wall padding installed on the walls of the gymnasium as a safety precaution as another place where their message, logo or team colours can be presented.

When it comes to planning seating in a gymnasium, available space is the first question that is asked in the process. While most schools and other facilities would love to pack the sidelines of any volleyball or basketball game with cheering fans, it often boils down to what exactly the gymnasium in question can handle.

While many gymnasiums are relatively similar in nature, there are those that are outside of the typical (84’ long and 50’ wide) gymnasium sizes. For those that are larger in nature, larger telescopic bleacher seating is the typical solution. For those that are smaller than standard gymnasiums, however, are met with a few additional challenges. When planning seating structures with limited space, it can become challenging, despite the highly-customizable capabilities our products have.

A little over a year ago, we were enlisted by the Anglophone South District School Board to outfit three of the board’s schools with innovative and customized retractable bleachers. As with many outdated retractable bleacher systems, the existing units were made of wood and were quickly becoming unsafe for both operators and spectators.

As part of the agreement, our team was contracted to remove and dispose of the existing bleachers and replace them with state-of-the-art units, complete with custom colouring and lettering.

As an extension of that project, we were again contacted by the school board to replace some existing bleachers that were approaching the end of their lifecycle.