Award-Winning Metal Building Contractors
Most commercial construction programs produce one building. On the Saints Peter & Paul campus in Easton, Maryland, we produced two, and both of them were recognized in the same year. Saints Peter & Paul High School won the 2021 STAR Building Systems Master Builder award for Best of Educational Projects. The Saints Peter & Paul Family Life Center, built on the same campus, won the 2021 STAR Building Systems Master Builder award for Best of Worship Projects.
Two buildings, two categories, one campus.
Two Award-Winning Builds on One Easton Campus
Both buildings came out of the parish’s Sacred Vision campaign, which set out to replace a high school that had been running from a temporary structure since the mid-1990s and to give the parish a gathering space of its own. That is one construction program carrying two very different buildings inside it: one that has to work as a school, and one that has to work as a place of worship.
A campus program is usually harder than its square footage suggests. Two buildings on one site means one set of utilities, one set of site logistics, one inspection schedule, and two building programs competing for the same crews and the same weather. The buildings are the visible part. The coordination between them is the part that decides whether the owner gets both on time.
Saints Peter & Paul High School
The high school is more than 60,000 square feet across 11 connected buildings, delivered on pre-engineered metal building systems. Bob Breeding General Contractors worked on this project as a subcontractor and self-performed the field work.
That distinction matters on a building of this shape. Connected buildings multiply the number of places where one trade’s work has to meet another’s, and every one of those joints is a handoff that can slip. When the handoffs sit inside one company rather than across four or five, fewer of them turn into a schedule problem, and the owner has one number to call when one of them does.
Eleven Connected Buildings, One Building System
Eleven connected buildings is not eleven separate jobs. It is one pre-engineered steel building program, engineered as a set, with the frames, the wind and snow loads, and the connections worked out before anything arrives on site. The prefabrication is what makes a school this size buildable on a parish schedule. Components are fabricated to the approved drawings and erected in sequence, which usually compresses the field time compared with a conventional build of the same footprint.
It also front-loads the risk. Decisions that a conventional project can defer have to be settled before fabrication starts, because a change after release is expensive and slow. On a campus with a fixed opening date, that trade is normally worth making, but it only works if someone is holding the design, the foundations, and the erection sequence together from the beginning.
The Family Life Center
The Family Life Center was built for a different job on the same campus. It holds parish offices, a chapel for daily Mass, and a social hall, which are three uses with three different expectations for acoustics, lighting, and finish inside one envelope.
Buildings like this one are where a pre-engineered approach is sometimes assumed not to fit, and that assumption is usually about finish rather than structure. The system sets the frame and the envelope. What happens inside is a general contracting question, and it is answered by scope and coordination rather than by the building system. The 2021 award in the Worship category went to this building, which is the clearest evidence available that the two can be reconciled.
What the Awards Actually Recognize
Both awards are STAR Building Systems Master Builder awards for 2021. In our own words at the time, we were honored to be selected by our peers to win Master Builder in the Education and Worship categories. They are peer recognition for completed work rather than a license or a certification, and we describe them that way deliberately.
Alongside them, Bob Breeding General Contractors has been a member of the Metal Building Contractors & Erectors Association since 2010. Membership is not a credential an owner should weigh on its own, but it is a reasonable thing to ask any contractor about, together with how they handle foundations, erection, and closeout. An owner comparing bids is entitled to ask what each of those words covers, because they do not cover the same scope at every company.
Why Two Awards on One Campus Matters to an Owner
One award on one building can mean a good building. Two awards on one campus, in two different categories, says something about the program rather than the building. The school and the Family Life Center had different users, different code paths, and different finish expectations, and they were delivered off one site with one set of local building requirements and one inspection relationship.
That is the case we make for coordination generally. Fragmented projects fail at the seams, between the steel package and the foundations, between the general contractor and the specialty trades, and between substantial completion and turnover. A design/build or general contracting arrangement that keeps those seams inside one accountable team tends to produce fewer of them. It is not a guarantee of schedule, and nobody should offer one. It is a reduction in the number of places where a schedule can come apart.
Building on the Eastern Shore
Our office is in Denton, in Caroline County, and our Maryland work sits across the Eastern Shore: Easton and Talbot County, St. Michaels, Ridgely, and Stevensville. Bob Breeding General Contractors has been family owned since 1969, carries three generations of experience, and has delivered more than 500 projects across the region.
Talk to Us About Your Project
If you are planning a school, a parish building, a warehouse, or any commercial building on the Eastern Shore, the earliest useful conversation is usually about site, schedule, and who is holding the moving parts. Contact us or call (410) 479-0921.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Bob Breeding projects at Saints Peter & Paul won awards?
Two buildings on the same Easton campus. Saints Peter & Paul High School won the 2021 STAR Building Systems Master Builder award for Best of Educational Projects, and the Saints Peter & Paul Family Life Center won the 2021 STAR Building Systems Master Builder award for Best of Worship Projects.
How large is the Saints Peter & Paul High School building?
More than 60,000 square feet across 11 connected buildings, delivered on pre-engineered metal building systems.
Does Bob Breeding handle foundations and installation, or just the steel package?
Both. We coordinate design, foundations, and erection, and we self-perform field work rather than passing all of it along. On the Saints Peter & Paul High School project we worked as a subcontractor and self-performed the work across the campus buildings.
What areas of Maryland does Bob Breeding serve?
The Eastern Shore, from our office in Denton. Our Maryland portfolio includes Easton and Talbot County, St. Michaels, Ridgely, and Stevensville. Contact us with a location and a building type and we will tell you plainly whether it is work we are set up to take on.