Once the new Pickering Middle School is built, Lynn Stapleton deserves a plaque inside the building.

A project executive with LeftField, a Boston-based school-construction management company, Stapleton helped shepherd the Thurgood Marshall Middle School from construction to completion on Brookline Street.

LeftField’s work on Marshall is a major reason why a city review team led by Mayor Jared C. Nicholson and Superintendent of Schools Dr. Patrick Tutwiler picked the firm to manage the new effort to replace the 106-year-old Pickering building on Conomo Avenue this week. 

“We can use the knowledge gained thus far to be more efficient in doing this the second time around,” Stapleton said this week. 

LeftField’s vision for the project is a 170,000- to 180,000-square-foot building costing the city between $130 million to $140 million.

In a preliminary scenario for the school’s construction presented to the committee, LeftField estimated a 2025 or mid-2026 completion date.

With $2.3 billion worth of construction projects in its portfolio, LeftField has ample experience building schools. Stapleton and her associates can hit the ground running in Lynn because they know the key players in city government responsible for tackling major city projects. 

Stapleton also has a working familiarity with top school officials. She knows how to translate a vision for a 21st-century urban middle school into concrete and steel.

Middle School Matters, a research website supported in part by the George W. Bush Institute, calls middle school, beginning with sixth grade, the “make-it-or-break-it” years. 

Marshall educators embrace a philosophy of redoubling efforts to keep students in school and broadening their academic horizons to embrace core subjects like mathematics and language arts and grasp technology and science studies.

Schools aren’t built to last for years; they are built to last for generations, and an experienced school project manager like Stapleton can ensure a new Pickering is built to meet that challenge.