Education Construction Management & Facilities Assessment

The master planning and construction management expertise of Carl A. Nelson & Company empowers K-12 schools to prioritize objectives, optimize resources, and deliver high-quality facilities on schedule and on-budget. 

With transparent communication and collaboration, we ensure stakeholders' involvement and informed decision-making. Trust our proven track record in creating functional spaces that enhance learning experiences. Contact us to discuss how we can support your school's construction needs.

There are many challenges while striving to provide for the ever-changing needs of your student body. We know that developments in technology, budget and funding issues, aging school buildings, and obtaining community support through bond referendums are all concerns that affect the decisions you must make when considering a new school, building addition, or renovation.

Working as a construction management agency, we are your advocate, from needs assessment and master planning through pre-construction, construction and project closeout.

Carl A. Nelson & Company has a proven track record as a school building contractor of working in collaboration with owners and architects to meet aggressive schedules and satisfy spatial requirements while being stewards of your resources and goals. We guide our clients to make the best decisions during the pre-construction phase by providing value engineering and experience-driven recommendations for the major systems of your building to preserve money and time.

We work hard to encourage strong participation from local contractors and suppliers in communities where we work to support your local economy, and also to increase the pool of bidders in an effort to ensure the best-possible results on bid day. 

In addition to our construction management experience, CANCO also has a long history of delivering quality school projects to communities through the competitive bid process in the general contractor role.

We have the experience to guide the efforts of the contractors, and influence the work of designers and engineers, to get you the best return on your community's investment in school infrastructure.


View our educational project portfolio


Whether you need help with needs assessment and master planning, or are ready to begin planning construction, contact Dan Culp, vice president of operations in our Burlington office. Dan oversees our projects for education clients.

Call him now at 319-754-8415 or fill out the contact form.




Clients attest to our Construction Management services, successes

On school construction projects where Carl A. Nelson & Company has been engaged in the role of construction management agency, school officials continue to praise our performance. Here are a trio of testimonials from recent CANCO CMa projects:

Sioux Center CSD

As the Sioux Center Community School District prepared to open its brand new, $42 million, 180,000 square-foot high school building, Superintendent Gary McEldowney had only good things to say about Carl A. Nelson & Company and the value the firm brought to the project in its role as construction manager.

The superintendent also offered a complimentary critique of the Carl A. Nelson & Company construction management project team. You can watch that video here.

BONUS: The project architect had some pretty nice things to say about our leadership, too. That video testimonial is here.


Danville CSD

In this video, Dr. Thomas Ward, then the superintendent for the Danville CSD in Danville, Iowa, speaks about the district's $8.7 million, K-12 addition and remodeling project, and the value achieved by using Carl A. Nelson & Company as construction management agency.

To learn more about the project, see this story in the news section of our website.


Shenandoah CSD

In this brief testimonial video, Shenandoah Community School District Superintendent Dr. Kerri Nelson discusses the benefits of engaging Carl A. Nelson & Company as construction manager on a project that resulted in a multi-million dollar renovation of Shenandoah High School. Visit our YouTube channel for the full-length video, which also addresses project history and our project team.

Read more about the project, and see a collection of before-and-after photos, in CANCO News.