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Groveport-Madison Local School District Playground and Fencing

Groveport Madison Schools had six elementary playgrounds in six different states of repair and one summer to deal with all of them. Rather than take a site a year for six years, the district put the whole set into a single 2025 contract covering playground structures, mulch surfacing, and perimeter fencing and gates at Asbury, Dunloe, Glendening, Groveport, Madison and Sedalia elementary schools.

Five of the six — Asbury, Dunloe, Groveport, Madison and Sedalia — receive a new PK–5 play structure, with the color theme at each site chosen by the district. Glendening receives no new structure; its work is fencing, mulch and an asphalt patch at an identified trip hazard, installed to reduce the step-off onto the grass. Where existing equipment stood inside the footprint of a new structure, at Groveport and at Sedalia, the district removes it to clear the space.

Mulch is topped off in every playground area at all six sites. Six-foot fencing goes in along the runs identified on each site plan, with swing gates at the identified points; where new fence ties into an existing four-foot or five-foot run, the new fence matches the height it meets rather than stepping up against it. The result is five new structures, refreshed surfacing at six playgrounds, and a fenced, gated boundary around each play area — bought pre-bid on a TOP-C unit price contract, on one set of documents rather than six.

New playground structure with red slides at Groveport Madison

Climbing panels and towers on the Groveport Madison playground

Technical Discussion

Six playgrounds in one summer

Six playgrounds is not six playground projects, and the difference is not the equipment. Bought one at a time, it is six mobilizations, six submittal rounds, six color approvals spread across several years, and six chances for the work to land in a month when children are on the site.

Bundled, it is one of each. One equipment order covering five PK–5 structures: one manufacturer, one lead time, one submittal package to review instead of five arriving in different formats in different years. One fencing scope written the same way at every site — six-foot fence on the runs identified on each site plan, swing gates at the identified points — so a crew that has finished Asbury already knows what Dunloe looks like. One mulch operation across all six. And one window: the weeks between the last bus of one year and the first bus of the next, which is the only stretch when a playground can be torn up at all.

The bundle also pulls the district's own decisions into one place, which is usually where the schedule is lost. Five color themes get chosen once, together, instead of five times across five budget cycles. And the removals the owner is responsible for — the play springs at Groveport, the existing structures inside the new footprint at Sedalia — land on one list with one date attached, rather than surfacing as a surprise at the fourth site in the third year.

What does not standardize should not be forced to, and this contract is careful about that. Glendening gets no new structure: fencing, mulch, and an asphalt patch at a trip hazard, with the contract noting plainly that drainage there may remain an issue to address later. Where new fence meets existing four-foot or five-foot fence, it matches the existing height instead of imposing a six-foot standard on a line that does not need one.

The version for a treasurer is one sentence: a single contract does not buy six identical playgrounds, it buys one mobilization, one submittal cycle, and one summer.

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