Featured Construction Project: Marlborough School

Marlborough School: One Smart Cookie

We do not know how the Marlborough School has achieved over 118 years of academic excellence, but we do know one way they ensure their buildings go up as fast as possible – they make good use of a construction coordination review.

Marlborough School Plans Ahead for Excellence

Does orange chicken or New England style clam chowder sound like typical school lunch fare? Likely not, but the Marlborough School is not your typical school either. Marlborough School in Los Angeles is known for superior education and vigorously pursues excellence, distinction and value. In fact, their graduates go on to attend universities like Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Cornell.

To demonstrate its dedication to distinction, this prestigious girl’s school has committed a $65 million investment into their Leadership in Learning Campaign, which includes campus expansion to support new technologies. The Nigro Firm participated in the review process of some of their expansion projects. This review should help their new buildings go up fast, so the girls, whose parents pay up to $26,750 for tuition, can utilize the new facilities as soon as possible.


The Marlborough School’s expansion projects benefit more than normal from accurate construction drawings due to its unique situation. For one, work must be conducted around the school schedule. Secondly, the school is located in the Hancock Park neighborhood that has build and noise restrictions. Lastly, it is a nonprofit with many interested parties including alumni, parents, board members and donors who all care about seeing that their energy and investments are used prudently. These three factors plus the usual desire for fewer RFI’s and change orders made the Marlborough School’s expansion project coordination review a potentially cost and time saving investment.

The Nigro Firm performed construction document coordination reviews for the school’s new Library/Technology and Visual Arts Center and Parking and Storage Space (86,375 sq ft) and renovation work including the Mudd Computer Center, Plaza areas and Mitchell Hall (18,446 sq ft). This review was particularly interesting since it had a number of unique features that required a custom coordination review. One was due to the fact that the school is located near the famous La Brea Tar Pits and required systems to handle methane emissions that are released underneath the buildings.

According to the Marlborough School’s website they are very excited about their new buildings and renovations. They will have plenty of computer space for their 390 computers and student laptops that help the girls test in the top 2% in the nation. Good job Marlborough.

To see what kind of other projects the Nigro Firm has performed construction document reviews for see our Project List.