Construction on Bryan ISD’s new transportation building continues

BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) – It’s now been a little more than a year since crews broke ground on the Ruby Haliburton Auxiliary Complex.

There’s been a lot of progress made on the facility in that time.

Inside the facility, one can now see the layout of the complex including meeting rooms, a conference room, a warehouse, and custodial.

The complex even has its own gas pump and bus wash system for the estimated 155 Bryan Transportation vehicles, including route buses, trip buses, and white fleet.

“We’re gonna have a bus wash. Right now we don’t have a bus wash, so it’s hard to keep the buses clean. It will be like you do your own car in your driveway, well that’s kind of how we are doing the buses,” says Lori Sears, the Director of Transportation with Bryan ISD.

Director of Construction and Energy Management, Paul Buckner, says the foundation and concrete pavement were completed over the summer and now they’re ahead of schedule.

“Streets and everything that go through it, with the completion of Viva Road, the widening of Leanord Road, we were able to get all of those completed pretty quickly,” said Buckner.

The main building seen from Leonard Road will house all of Bryan ISD’s departments. Inside the main building will include maintenance, transportation, school nutrition, custodial, food services, and school records.

“All of the departments except for transportation, there will be a couple of areas in there that will have transportation. Transportation will mainly be housed in the other building that is perpendicular to Learnard Road that will have them there with their mechanics, the bus bays, bus wash system, and everything over there,” said Buckner.

This week, the facility’s utilities are being finalized.

“Right now we have the great crews from BTU out here, they are getting our permanent power set up outside of the building, then we just have the various trades- plumbing, electrical, HVAC, etc. kind of out here getting everything lined up and ready to get completion here in the next few months,” said Buckner.

While Sears is excited for the facility to be complete, she’s more excited that their buses will be cared for better than ever.

“Our shop, it’s going to be so much bigger and so much better and I’m looking forward to having them being able to work and keep buses maintained so that they’re on the road and not having problems with breakdowns,” said Sears.

Buckner and Sears say the next step is planning how to move all of the school’s departments and transportation vehicles to the new facility over the summer.

“It’s not like you wake up one morning and you just get up and you move the whole thing, this is a process and we’re shooting to be over here sometime in June, maybe as late as July, but it’s not gonna happen over the weekend,” said Sears. “So I’ve got a plan started, we’ve got some ideas going right now of how we’re going to do this. and we’ve actually started implementing some of those to get ready for the move.”

They’re even looking at hosting summer school in the new facility.

“We’re currently looking at summer school being operated out of this facility and not the old one. And probably while summer school is still going on, we’ll still be in the process of moving,” said Sears.