Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) is one of the ten largest school districts in Florida, serving more than 209,000 students across 200+ schools. Olympia High School — one of the district’s largest and most prominent campuses — educates a student population of approximately 2,900.
When OCPS received funding to complete a full HVAC retrofit across the 11-building high school campus, the challenge was both technical and logistical. The campus had to stay open and students had to stay comfortable while 49 aging air handling units, two centrifugal chillers and an entire heating hot water system had to be replaced — without anyone inside a classroom disrupted by the work happening around them.
A campus of this scale couldn’t be completed in a single summer. With 11 buildings, 49 air handling units and a heating hot water system in need of full replacement, the scope stretched well beyond what any one school break window could accommodate. Summer school added another constraint: even during the off-season, the campus wasn’t fully vacant. The project would have to run across an entire school year, with the team working around class schedules, student activities and the daily rhythms of an active high school.
The standard approach — shut down systems, replace equipment, restore service — wasn’t an option. Every unit, every pump and every piece of equipment had to come out and go back in on a timeline measured in hours, not days. With 2,900 students arriving every Monday morning, the margin for error was effectively zero.
Working with general contractor Gilbane and engineer of record Matern Engineering, Corvant developed a weekend shutdown methodology that became the backbone of the entire project. Every Friday after the last bell, Corvant’s crews moved in. By Monday morning, they were gone — and the students who arrived found a newly replaced HVAC system waiting for them.
Each weekend cycle followed a precise sequence. On Friday evening, crews demolished three existing air handling units along with associated ductwork, chilled water and heating hot water piping. Running shifts of 10 to 12 hours, teams worked around the clock through Saturday and into Sunday — setting new units, ducting, piping, pressure testing and insulating. Saturday evening, electrical contractors wired the equipment and mounted controls. Sunday morning, equipment manufacturers completed startup. By Monday, three fully replaced, fully commissioned units were online and ready for students.
That cycle repeated every weekend through the school year. When summer break opened, the pace accelerated — crews shifted to a building-by-building approach, completing all 49 units across a four-month span.
The heating hot water system required a different approach. Rather than working with existing underground piping — deteriorated from years of use — Corvant ran an entirely new heating hot water loop across the roof of each building, dropping new supply and return lines into each mechanical room and feeding the system with two new boilers. The boiler replacements followed the same weekend shutdown methodology as the air handlers — in and out without disrupting the facility.
The final phase was the cooling plant. To replace the pumps and cooling towers without interrupting water service to the chillers, Corvant brought in temporary cooling tower equipment to maintain condenser water throughout the process. Chilled water pump replacements were executed during overnight shifts. The cooling towers were replaced without a single break in service to the campus.
Throughout, the project depended on tight coordination across every partner on site — from the general contractor to equipment suppliers and controls contractors. Everyone had to perform on the same compressed timeline for the approach to work.
Olympia High School’s 2,900 students completed the school year with a fully operational, newly replaced HVAC system — and according to OCPS, they barely knew the work was happening. The project was turned over ahead of schedule, 100 percent complete, with a campus that had received a complete mechanical overhaul entirely in the background of continued instruction.
For Orange County Public Schools, it confirmed that with Corvant, a project of this complexity and scale could be done with confidence in operational continuity — without disruption to the students and staff depending on it.
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