Fixed Tables

It seems that every week for the past three months I have the pleasure of announcing one more milestone reached in Huntsman Hall. I am keeping the streak going again this week.

The big milestone we reached this week is the installation of the fixed tables. It commenced last Friday. So far, two classrooms have tables installed.

In our 50-seat and 80-seat tiered classrooms, the tables are fixed –i.e., bolted to the floor. Power is run through the tables and is available to students at their seats. These fixed tables are a major part of 18 of our 21 new classrooms. Altogether, the cost of the fixed tables is over $400,000.

Fixed tables

I took a photo of the fixed tables. The lights aren’t installed in the room yet and there is only one construction light on, so the room is a little dark. But don’t the tables look great?!? I can’t wait until I can see students sitting behind those tables.

Ken Snyder

Laying Down the Floor

Last week, the floor guys started laying tiles on Level 1 of Huntsman Hall. It’s a little messy until they finish laying the tiles and clean up, but it is really nice-looking

I am told that laying floor tiles is something that happens toward the end of the construction project. The reason is that the floors see lots of heavy traffic and we don’t want a brand new floor to get scuffed up or damaged.

The laying of the floor is a sign that we are inching closer and closer to completion of Huntsman Hall.

Ken Snyder

The Glass Ceiling (Canopy)

As a follow-up to my blog last week about the new northwest entrance to the business building complex, this week I want to tell you about the roof over the entrance. It’s made of glass. And it serves as both a roof and a ceiling over the enclosed spaces of the entrance, as well as a canopy over the exterior entryway and the exterior space between the Eccles business building and the new Huntsman Hall.

This is a story better told by pictures, so I have attached a few.

Canopy over the front entryway

Construction workers installing the glass panels of the roof/ceiling/canopy

Several glass panels installed

Cool – isn’t it!?

Ken Snyder

The Northwest Passage

As I mentioned in one of my blogs last month, one of the big projects during the summer is redoing the northwest entrance. We want the northwest entrance to be one entrance with doors into each of the two buildings. It is necessary to make the building complex seamless. We do not want there to be two different entrances. By “one entrance” we mean one walkway, one set of steps leading up to the building complex, one roof covering, and one concrete slab across the entire breadth of the entrance. 

Current NW entrance under construction

This entrance is critical to the success of our new building. When we were doing the programming for the building, we measured traffic in and out of every entrance to gain a better understanding of how students used the Eccles building, and to project how students might use the new building complex. We discovered that 75 percent of the students entering the Eccles building entered through the northwest entrance. Because most of the business classes will shift to the new classrooms in the new Huntsman Hall, and because the northwest entrance will be the main entrance to those classrooms, we project that about 85 percent of the student traffic in and out of the business building complex will be through the northwest entrance. This entrance will be well-used! 

NW entrance rendeer

In order to make the entrance more user-friendly, we have made some big changes. First, we more than doubled the number of doors, thereby increasing the capacity of the entrance. There should be no more waiting in lines to get in or out of the business building. Second, we added a snow melt system to the stairs and to the landing area at the top of the stairs. We also added some walk-off mats in the vestibule coming into Huntsman Hall. There should be no more puddling of snow melt inside the halls of the business building. Third, we created an open atrium-like space coming into the building complex. This space will be used for banners, screens with announcements, an informational kiosk, and so on. Students will no longer enter into the building complex and immediately be thrust into the classroom hallways. And fourth, and most importantly, the northwest entrance will also serve as one of the main passageways between the two buildings.

Students will benefit tremendously from the increased usefulness and capacity of the new northwest passage.

Ken Snyder

Grinding It Out

I was trying to think of something exciting to report. Nothing came to mind. I reviewed the list of things we worked on during the past week. Nothing jumped out and said “write about me.” Then I realized that a lot of the big exciting things are done, and we are now in the phase of taking care of lots of little details. 

Let me use our construction meeting agenda from last week as an example. The construction meeting is our weekly meeting that includes us (the “users”) from the Huntsman School, university facilities representatives, architects, various people from the general contractor, and the state DFCM representative.

We covered 23 items on the agenda. This is actually fewer than what we’ve had on the agenda in recent weeks. The previous two weeks had 35 and 37 items respectively.


Here are some of the items:

· Holes for return air in metal panels

· Switch to LED lighting in corridors and public areas

· Confirm placement of fire extinguisher cabinets

· Resolve conflict between duct and light fixture placement in large tiered classrooms

· Change doors in stairwells to meet fire code

· Approve final Dean’s Suite design

· Handrail on bridges between buildings on Level 3

· Ensure power and data to the Huntsman Library

· And so on…

Maybe you can see why nothing jumped out at me and said “write about me.”

I am happy to report that of the 23 items on the agenda, eight items were completely closed. six other items were decided and acted upon and just needed the paperwork to catch up to the work in order to be closed. All of the other items were designated as action items and assigned to the appropriate people for action.

I suspect every weekly meeting will be a lot like this from now on until the building is finished. Grinding through lots of little details…

Ken Snyder

Plywood Windows?

Starting this week, the construction crews will start installing plywood over all of the windows on the south and west sides of Huntsman Hall. It will look like the building has plywood windows. I am writing this blog in anticipation of being asked the question, “Uh, why does your new business building have plywood windows – don’t you have enough money for glass windows?”

So here’s the answer to the obvious question. 

Yes, we do have enough money for glass windows. Matter of fact, the glass windows are all installed. We are now covering all of the windows to protect them while we install the shades on the building. If you’ve been reading my blog for a long time, you may remember my blog from April 11, 2014 titled “So Bright You’ve Gotta Wear Shades.” The shades are to control the heat gain in the building, and to reduce the demand for air conditioning on hot days. This picture is a rendering with a red arrow pointing to one of the shades.

The answer to that question may lead to a few other questions, such as:

· Why do you need to cover the windows with plywood?

That’s a great question. It’s because the shades are welded to the support structure, and sparks from the welding process may damage the windows.

· Why didn’t you install the shades first and then install the windows – instead of having to put plywood over all of them?

Because the windows are so large that they cannot be installed once the shades are in place.

So now you know why we have plywood windows. It will only last a few weeks.

Ken Snyder

Summertime

With classes running full tilt, and with thousands of students around, there are certain construction items we can’t do very easily when school is on. Summertime gives us a chance to do these construction items with less impact.

We have a few big construction items we are tackling this summer. Most of these items are related to entrances, or to the connections between our current Eccles Building and the new Huntsman Hall. The entrance most affected by construction is the main entrance used by over 75% of the people who enter the business building – the entrance on the northwest corner of the Eccles Building. We want this entrance to serve as a seamless entrance into both buildings. This will require jackhammering up the existing concrete steps, rebuilding the steps as a single, seamless unit, adding snow melt so the entrance will be easy to navigate in the winter, and making the entrance look and feel like it is one entrance into the business building complex. I have attached a rendering of what the entrance will look like by the end of summer.

There are six connections between the two buildings. We are also finalize the work on all of those connections this summer to avoid having to do the work when classes are on and students are roaming about. More on that later…

Ken Snyder