Dana Hall – News

Campus Construction Update: Sept. 22, 2022

Doug Hubley — Wed, 21 Sep 2022 11:47:56 +0000

After more than a year of renovation that has redefined Dana Hall’s role in science education at �ֲ��ý, the building formally reopened with a celebration on Aug. 29.

“It is kind of spectacular, the transformation that has been accomplished over a fairly brief time — it really is brief, when you consider the scope of the work,” Malcolm Hill, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty, told the gathering.

That transformation rendered Dana’s interior infinitely more user-friendly, replacing a dim and labyrinthine interior with bright surfaces, long sightlines, and cheerful student spaces. And the project broadened Dana’s academic mission from a singular focus on chemistry to introductory chem and biology, with a side order of three active-learning classrooms suitable for any subject.

Shear excitement: On the brink of the Aug. 29 ribbon-cutting that formally opened Dana Hall are, from left, Geoff Swift, vice president for finance and administration and treasurer; President Clayton Spencer; and Malcolm Hill, vice president of academic affairs and dean of the faculty. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

A fume hood in a first-floor chemistry lab in Dana Hall stands next to a window revealing an associated classroom. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Chris Streifel, the �ֲ��ý Facility Services senior project manager who has overseen the renovation of Dana Hall and other high-profile construction projects in recent years, climbs a Dana stairway during the Aug. 29 reopening. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

A corner office in Dana Hall. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

President Clayton Spencer and Hoi Ning Ngai, associate director of the Center for Purposeful Work, pass a third-floor study room during the Aug. 29 reopening reception for Dana Hall. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Dana Hall shown from Alumni Walk on Sept. 14, a week into the 2022–2023 academic year. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Both academically and socially, in other words, the renovated Dana is now a place for all �ֲ��ý students.

“That is all due to the hard work of many, including our design and construction partners and the brilliant �ֲ��ý facilities team,” Hill told the Aug. 29 gathering. Like the rest of campus, Dana opened for the academic year the week of Labor Day.

Dana made his fortune in part through investing in the production of the universal joint — not a populist cannabis product.

Also speaking at the event, as well as joining Hill in a ritual ribbon-cutting, were �ֲ��ý President Clayton Spencer and Geoff Swift, vice president for finance and administration and the college’s treasurer.

Spencer offered a concise history of Dana, which was dedicated in 1965 and named for lead donor Charles A. Dana, who was a kind of Johnny Appleseed of campus construction at a variety of schools. (We learned later that Dana made his fortune in part through investing in the production of the universal joint — not a populist cannabis product, but an industrially vital mechanical device often seen spinning underneath box trucks.)

This image captured through a door into Dana Hall’s chemical prep room exemplifies the way design firm Payette has brought natural light more deeply into the building. Visible through the windows is Alumni Walk. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Swift, meanwhile, thanked the many parties whose efforts made the Dana renovation a reality, including �ֲ��ý’ capital projects staff, construction management company Consigli, the project designers of Boston architectural firm Payette, and many more.

Thirty or 40 people attended the afternoon gathering, which began at Dana’s Alumni Walk entrance with a supply of Dining Services treats close by. Most of the scheduled two hours was allotted simply for folks to wander through the building.

Many who were familiar with Dana were “kind of shocked,” in a good way, by the results of the makeover, says Chris Streifel, who has overseen the renovation as a senior project manager for �ֲ��ý.

Karen Chen ’26 of Brooklyn, N.Y., studies in Dana Hall’s first-floor “living room,” which affords dramatic views of Alumni Walk and Commons. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

“A large number of people had never been in Dana before, too, were just impressed with what they found, not even knowing what the transformation really meant. So I think that my biggest takeaway was just the gratification of [observing] people see what I have seen, which is a much different building now, and for the better.”

Indeed, there’s a lot to admire in the new Dana, from banks of state-of-the art lab equipment to preserved remnants of past construction techniques to unprogrammed student spaces of a kind increasingly considered essential to student success.

Jay Burns, �ֲ��ý Communications editorial director, took a moment to talk with architect Michael Hinchcliffe about the thinking behind those student spaces. Hinchcliffe, a principal at Payette, was the lead architect of the Dana project as well as the Bonney Science Center, which opened last year. (Both projects, as well as Carnegie Science Hall, are part of a strategic reconfiguration of �ֲ��ý science facilities.)

Facing Dana Hall’s second-floor lobby from �ֲ��ý’ Center for Inclusive Teaching and Learning. A key goal of the Dana renovation was to brighten and open up the building’s dim, convoluted interior. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Hinchcliffe pointed to a significant difference in emphasis between Dana and Bonney. The latter, he explained, was designed in large part to create “advanced scientific environments in an undergraduate setting.” But the new Dana — originally Dana Chemistry Hall — was reinvented largely to appeal to a broad swath of users and to take advantage of its central location on Alumni Walk.

Central to that objective are features such as glass-walled study rooms, furniture casually sited along public ways, and an inviting “living room” with fab views of Alumni Walk. (But note that this point of contrast between Dana and Bonney isn’t absolute. Bonney’s two-story, glass-walled Beacon lounge is also meant to draw users from across campus.)

Consultations with the campus community during the design phase revealed that �ֲ��ý students, like their peers elsewhere, seek out seemingly random seating for myriad purposes — for solitude, for a quiet conversation, for a perch to munch a power bar between commitments.

A view from Dana Hall’s first-floor lobby toward the Alumni Walk entrance. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

“That was in the back of our minds for spaces like this,” Hinchcliffe said. “Most campus buildings from the ’50s [onward] even into the ’80s were over-programmed. Everything was super efficient. They didn’t have this little bit of extra space for students.

“Buildings like Dana and Bonney can offer a type of ‘third space.’ So if you’re working on a problem set or on a project with some peers, you can come to a place like this and work in a way that’s different from someone’s dorm room or a classroom. It’s a little bit more public“ — which can afford a sense of security when people don’t know each other well — “yet it still provides a focus, and quiet, and resources like whiteboards and monitors.”

Such places can nurture a sense of belonging, Hinchcliffe continued. According to “a fair amount of literature on modeled behavior and territoriality, students tend to find a place their freshman or their sophomore year that they feel comfortable in. And they’ll tend to go back there, and they also tend to create communities of ‘Oh, yeah, I always see someone else studying there, so it’s okay for me to study there.”

Are we there yet? Oftentimes, says Streifel, there’s a comfortable interval between the actual end of construction on a major project and its ceremonial conclusion. So in terms of readiness and presentability, “the shine is already on the apple at that point.”

Dana 119, originally built as a lecture hall with a raked floor, is now a lab for teaching introductory chemistry. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

In the case of Dana, though, “we were really polishing it right up to the very end.”

And even now there’s some work to do. (By way of perspective, some punch list items across campus at the Bonney Center weren’t cleared until this summer.)

There are subtle finishing touches to Dana’s mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems remaining — the kind of things that someone can do before classes start for the day. The casework contractor paid a few evening visits last week to discipline some balky drawer slides. Prior to that, there was late-arriving door glass to install.

In the longer term, the tardy autoclave that we mentioned last time will arrive in time for installation during October break, as will some water purification equipment and additional casework. And, as we’ve written before, it takes four seasons to fine-tune a new HVAC system. Streifel himself has a lot of desk work still to do in closing out contracts, etc.

An active-learning classroom in the newly renovated Dana Hall. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

But with Aug. 29 receding in the rearview mirror, he says, “it’s just a relief to be at the tail end of a significant project that was full of challenges and unknowns. And to be able to take something right at the core of the campus, and do a very significant renovation, and turn it back over to its intended use on schedule and on budget, is always a very good deal.”

Chasm Hall: You could say — in fact, we actually are saying — that a recent theme for the Chase Hall renovation has been “holes.”

This Sept. 16 image shows the void left by the removal of two concrete floor slabs in Chase Hall. Temporarily a room with a view, the reception area for the Office of Intercultural Education appears slightly above center. (Courtesy of Consigli Construction)

If you passed the building via Campus Avenue last week, you might have seen a big old hole right in front of the entrance near the Chase–Carnegie Science courtyard. The bottom of the pit had been lined with gravel and was being compacted in preparation for concrete. Along one end of the pit, a partial retaining wall had been placed and a rodbuster was wiring up rebar in anticipation of the next pour.

Here a ramp will be built to carry visitors down into Chase’s new main lobby. But before that happens, walls lining the public sidewalk to either side of the ramp location will be started, with bench seats molded right into the concrete.

Other holes could be found inside Chase. There was a pretty good one inside that same main entrance, as the stairs and the landing outside Skelton and Hirasawa lounges had been demolished. One could look straight down from the second floor to ground level.

Where people using this Chase Hall entrance previously climbed some steps to enter the building, the renovation will provide an accessible ramp here that descends gently from street level into the ground floor. Here, workers are preparing the site for the new construction. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

A second-floor window affords a view of site work in front of Chase Hall. A new ramp descending from street level will serve one of two rebuilt Campus Avenue entrances. Note the glossy marine clay around the excavation. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Three separate rooms are being joined to form a student activity space on Chase Hall’s second floor. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

If you came up to Chase Hall’s first floor from the ground level last week, this view of the lobby is what greeted you. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Stockpiled building materials and new ceilings on the second floor. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

This wall in Chase Hall’s lobby will accommodate, at left behind the chair, a door leading to OIE prayer rooms and other first-floor facilities; and, at right, access to a major stairway connecting the building’s three main levels. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

The former College Store looking toward the entrance and Chase Hall’s ground-level lobby. Between the camera and the red-brick columns, offices for Campus Life and a community service program will be placed. The space beyond the brick columns will become a student lounge. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Chase Hall Lounge, minus a wall. Note the familiar fireplace at left. The yellow doorway at center shows the location of a new main stairway that will connect all levels of Chase Hall. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

A “rodbuster” wires up rebar in preparation for the placement of a concrete retaining wall at what was once Chase Hall’s primary Campus Avenue entrance. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

But the biggest and best hole was in the area behind Chase Lounge. Once a zone of student arts clubs and before them, Dining Services facilities, it’s the future location of stairs and an elevator. In the past weeks the concrete first- and second-floor slabs had been removed, leaving something like a messy atrium.

But how is a floor slab removed safely? “The concrete slabs were demolished via a robotic electric concrete-cutting saw,” explained Mike Carpentier, Chase project superintendent for Consigli Construction, the firm managing the project for �ֲ��ý.

“The rails for the saw are bolted to the slab and it travels on them to make the cuts. This allows the pieces to be dropped to the floor below without workers being in the area. When workers were in the area to move the saw along to the location of the next cut, they were tied off via safety harnesses to the steel structure above.”

Chase Hall Lounge, now missing a wall. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

We gawked at this spectacle (and looked around for a concession stand) while �ֲ��ý project manager Kristi Mynhier, our tour guide, discussed sprinkler-pipe placement with master plumber Chris Becker, who stood on the far side of the chasm. We expected to hear echoes.

But this man-made wonder of the world won’t be around long. Footings and the foundation for the new stairway and elevator will be placed during the next month.

In previous Chase reporting we’ve mentioned a series of “surprises,” building conditions not shown in old plans or other records. These have been good for Campus Construction Update (yay, sources of dramatic tension that we didn’t have to contrive!) — but not so much for the people actually doing the construction, who have had to scramble to accommodate things like unanticipated hazardous materials and undocumented structural elements.

New door frames, electrical rough-ins, and ceilings on the second floor. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Well, here’s an example of the scrambling. Mynhier says that new emphasis is being given to mechanical, electrical, and plumbing rough-ins — in fact, in a change of plan, MEP crews will have to work on multiple floors at the same time so the Chase project can be finished by the stipulated date.

“With all of these unforeseen issues that we encountered while we were demoing and exposing the existing structure, it pushed the schedule so that we had to resequence, and the MEP rough-ins became the critical path” — the sequence of jobs that have priority.

“So we actually had to make sure the crews could increase their size in order to do both the first floor rough-in and the second floor rough-in at the same time to keep us on schedule.”

At least, Mynhier says, “I think we’ve uncovered all the surprises now, thankfully.” And the construction team for Chase’s next renovation — 100 years from now? — will be able to refer to the 360-degree construction images, many of them in-wall, that the project team is making now.

The Farnsworth Report: Of project manager Paul Farnsworth’s summer responsibilities, Olin Arts Center is where the most work remains to be done. For both the HVAC system replacement and the installation of a new main electrical panel, the arrival of major components has been delayed.

This drone’s-eye view of the Russell Street Track shows the new Mondo track surface in all its ruddy glory. Russell Street itself runs between left and center. (Courtesy of Dave Cleaveland/Maine Imaging)

But the building is running just fine. The 800-amp panel was ordered in January and, says Farnsworth, “we’re still not sure it will arrive by next January.” In the meantime, the current distribution panel (or current current distribution panel — see what we did there?) is fully functional, just old.

As for the HVAC system, still outstanding are chillers that will cool and dehydrate interior air. But rental units are bridging the gap till the permanent units are installed, which is expected by October. System debugging is still in progress, but the rental units have enabled technicians to balance flows within the system, so that important step is done.

Appearing beneath the “�ֲ��ý” in this drone image of the resurfaced Russell Street Track is the water jump for the steeplechase course. (Courtesy of Dave Cleaveland/Maine Imaging)

A view of the new Russell Street Track surface, with Lafayette Street in the background. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Terracotta is the color of the brand-new Mondo surface on the Russell Street Track. While the surface is settling in, the black mat protects it from foot traffic using the soccer field enclosed by the track. The vans in the background are rented by the college for student activities. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

An oblique camera angle turns the Russell Street Track surface into diamonds. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

John Bertram Hall provides a backdrop to the new grandstand at the Campus Avenue Field. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

ADA-compliant access to the new bleachers at the Campus Avenue Field. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

The new bleachers at the Campus Avenue Field. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Farnsworth also oversaw two high-profile undertakings for �ֲ��ý Athletics during the summer. One is done: the replacement of the Mondo-brand rubber surface on the Russell Street Track. Bobcats in the track and field program will first compete on the new surface next spring.

Finally, over at the Campus Avenue Field, the new permanent bleachers are fully functional but still awaiting the metaphorical cherry on top: a �ֲ��ý-branded awning to cover the platform where photographers and videographers work. That should ship by the end of September.

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes queries and comments about current, past, future, and current construction at �ֲ��ý. Write to dhubley@bates.edu, putting “Campus Construction” or “Don’t bogart that populist cannabis product, my friend!” in the subject line.

Campus Construction Update: Aug. 11, 2022

Doug Hubley — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 17:13:08 +0000

Dana Hall’s future users are scheduled to begin moving into the building starting this coming Monday, Aug. 15.

The move is one of the final milestones in a comprehensive renovation that was years in the planning and about 14 months in execution. The academic building formerly known as Dana Chemistry Hall will open as fall semester classes start on Sept. 7.

Built in 1965 as a center for chemistry teaching and research, Dana exits the renovation with a broadened mission: It’s now the home of introductory education in biology and chemistry at �ֲ��ý, but also houses state-of-the-art general classrooms for use by all academic departments.

Dana Hall’s second-floor lobby. The entrance at center left opens onto the Historic Quad. The workbench at center is used for cutting plastic lenses for ceiling light fixtures like the ones overhead. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

A general-purpose classroom on Dana Hall’s second floor. The modular furniture can easily be reconfigured and moved around to suit various active-learning situations. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Shown in Dana Hall’s attic, this shiny new contraption supplies compressed air to the labs. The dusty compressor at left was brought in temporarily for use in system testing. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

A furniture supplier’s car is among vehicles parked at Dana Hall on Aug. 3. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

A third-floor study room in Dana Hall. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Pulling a ceiling tile into place in Dana Hall’s first-floor “living room.” (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Dana 119 is an introductory chemistry lab. The temporary plastic film on the fume hoods keeps out dust and other contaminants. The rod projecting from the ceiling is the mount for a projector. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Dana Hall’s first-floor lobby. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Labeling various system components was one of the few tasks remaining in Dana Hall’s attic during our Aug. 3 visit. These HVAC ducts expel waste air from the building. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

The repurposing is part of a greater transformation of science facilities at the college that has also included construction of the Bonney Science Center, which opened nearly a year ago.

In addition to redefining Dana’s academic role, the makeover vastly improves the experience of simply being inside this building at the heart of campus. Once known for a confined and confusing interior layout, Dana now boasts bright, open interior spaces and vastly improved wayfinding.

Credit there goes to the Boston architectural firm Payette, which also designed the Bonney Science Center. And the two buildings now share a bold visual style distinguished by a white, gray, and lime-green palette, clear sightlines, and a certain sense of industrial chic.

The college received a municipal certificate of occupancy for Dana in June, and �ֲ��ý and project construction management firm Consigli Construction have formally agreed that the project is “substantially complete” — meaning that operational control has reverted to the college.

Built as Dana Chemistry Hall, the newly renovated building has been renamed to reflect the broadening of its mission. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

While the list of folks to be based in Dana is still in flux, a few are confirmed: Bruno Salazar-Perea, a lecturer in biology and the faculty fellow for medical studies; Alyson Farrington, assistant in instruction in chemistry and biochemistry; and staff from the Environmental Health and Safety office and from the Center for Inclusive Teaching and Learning.

Two or three days should suffice for moving people in, �ֲ��ý Project Manager Chris Streifel said in an Aug. 3 interview. As for inanimate objects, virtually all furniture is on site, if not all in its allotted locations. And supplies and implements for scientific work? “Alyson has tons of stuff for the general chemistry labs” coming in from the Bonney Center, Streifel said.

“That’s far and away the biggest single cluster of things. Then there’s a mishmash of stuff coming from Carnegie Science Hall for the biology spaces. The move is really not a big effort, at least compared to moving into Bonney last summer.”

The painting in Dana Hall isn’t done quite yet. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

But Streifel also noted that tangled supply chains continue to affect the Dana project, if not in a decisive way. “There’s an autoclave that we’ve been waiting on for months that still has an unknown delivery date. We’re seeing slowdowns in some other science equipment that we ordered quite a while ago.”

He added, “The furniture that we ordered with ample lead time, well, it certainly came down to the wire in a couple of cases. But there’s nothing still [missing] at this point that should waylay us from opening for classes.”

As for work on the building itself, the chore list had gotten pretty short when we visited Dana last week. A substantial number of doors still awaited installation, a process slowed by a shortage of workers in that particular trade. (Our suggestion of hanging beaded curtains as a stopgap measure was politely rebuffed.) There was painting to finish as well.

In terms of mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, the building-wide tests collectively known as commissioning are wrapping up, Streifel said. Scheduled for late last week was the integrated systems test, which focuses on things electrical. “We’ll turn everything off and turn it on and see if it comes back the way it’s supposed to.”

The main IT closet in Dana Hall. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Punch lists are being closed out, meaning that remaining defects are being addressed. Last Friday, the project team was slated to review that process one last time with Payette principal architect Michael Hinchcliffe.

Six years into the relationship between �ֲ��ý and Payette, Streifel characterized the Boston firm as “fantastic” — expert, engaged, and supportive. “When there’s a need for something, they’re there to provide it,” he said. “They’ve put together a good building for us” — again.

“This space is going to work really well for us for many decades to come.”

When slabs collide

Deep in the renovation zone on Chase Hall’s first floor, �ֲ��ý project manager Kristi Mynhier points overhead.

In a part of the building where demolition has left little but structural elements, removal of the suspended ceiling has revealed two very different surfaces.

Seen from below in Chase Hall are two different techniques for creating concrete slabs: Precast panels are at left, and at right is a slab cast in place (with the paper liner used to curtail oozing now apparent). (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

With a massive steel beam at their junction, each surface is the underside of a concrete floor slab. One slab comprises long, pale panels of concrete. But the concrete substance of the other can’t be seen from here: It’s atop a dark complex of steel parts and a layer of paper.

We’re visiting an area where, as part of the 14-month renovation of the �ֲ��ý landmark, a pair of restrooms will be built. This is along the junction of the two additions to the century-old original building: Memorial Commons, opened in 1950, and a 1978 expansion of the dining area that resulted in what came to be known as the Small Room (or the Tool Shed, a snarky allusion to the more studious undergrads who were rumored to gather there).

It’s slightly poignant to consider that the restroom will be used by people who, unless they closely follow Campus Construction Update, have no idea of the history over their heads.

As part of the 1950 renovation, the paper-lined slab was cast in place atop tubular steel joists, explains Consigli Construction’s Michael Carpentier, project superintendent for the Dana and Chase renovations. (Consigli is the construction management firm for both renovation projects.)

Gaping holes in these Chase Hall walls were once filled with post office boxes. Soon the walls will be gone, too. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Half of Chase Hall Lounge has undergone asbestos abatement during the past few weeks. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

A new stairway will pass through this former College Store space. The floor has been precut to ease its demolition. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Bereft of wall, ceiling, and floor coverings, Chase Hall’s first-floor lobby hardly looks like itself. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

A new elevator and a new stairway will be placed near the OIE reception area, shown at rear. But first the entire floor slab will be removed. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Situated at the east end of Chase Lounge, this space will be hard to recognize after the Chase Hall renovation. The single door into the lounge will be replaced by double glass doors, and the stairs will become a ramp leading to a landing for a new stairway and elevator. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Chase Hall under renovation on Aug. 3, 2022. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

While the exact process isn’t known, it’s possible that the paper was used to constrain oozing around removable wooden forms that actually supported the concrete as it cured. Similar techniques were used in Dana and Pettigrew halls.

The 1978 slab, meanwhile, “is a panelized precast system set over steel beams,” Carpentier says. “These panels were fabricated offsite and craned into position before installing the roof structure.”

Such discoveries exemplify the archaeological appeal of building renovations — especially when the building is as old as Chase, built in 1919.

Both Consigli and Canal 5 Studio, architectural designers of the renovation, are doing what Mynhier calls a “phenomenal job” harmonizing the project goals with campus affection for Chase — and with the sometimes-challenging realities of a building with a mind-bending history of makeovers large and small.

A new stairway will emerge at this point on Chase Hall’s second floor near Skelton Lounge. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

If surprises come with every building project, Chase Hall is especially rich in “What the…?!” moments. The junction between the two additions, for instance, poses its own puzzle for the project team to solve — but it’s underfoot, not overhead.

As Mynhier says, “We have got the flooring contractor working to see what we can do, as far as prep goes, so that we can successfully install new flooring” over the joint between the additions’ subfloors, a groove that zigzags across the space.

Continuing the surprise theme, we told you last time about a bunch of them clustered in a section of Chase’s second floor that’s laid out in rooms — most recently, Student Affairs offices — branching from a central corridor.

One such surprise was the presence within two walls of load-bearing columns where the building plans showed no such thing. The walls will be removed as planned, rendering three smaller rooms into one flexible student-activities room, but the structurally necessary columns will stay, joined by a few new ones.

Two walls will be removed to make one room out of three on Chase Hall’s second floor, but load-bearing columns like the one at left will remain and more will be added. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

“We’re reworking the furniture plan around the columns,” says Mynhier.

In other Chase news, hazmat-abatement firm Acadia Contractors continues to remove asbestos-bearing materials at specific sites in the basement and on the first floor. Abatement on the latter has included a big chunk of Chase Hall Lounge and a section of ceiling near the door that opens into the Carnegie Science–Chase Hall courtyard.

The later assignment entailed the removal of both materials hazardous and otherwise. “Instead of having two different trades mobilize, we just had Acadia perform selective demolition to get to where they needed to abate,” Mynhier explains. The ceiling job will make way for a new layout of walls, stairs, and access to Campus Avenue — taken together, a defining outcome of the renovation.

Acadia Contractors is doing asbestos abatement in Chase Hall. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

But Chase, of course, has two entrances onto Campus Avenue, and both will be dramatically reconfigured in the renovation. At the entrance near Bardwell Street and the Muskie Archives, visitors will find a new elevator and stairs designed to streamline access to the Office of Intercultural Education and other key facilities at that end of the building.

In preparation for those new features, the demolition of large expanses of floor slab on three levels began late last week. Consigli is knocking out the sections of slab.

Mano a Mondo

The new Mondo rubber surface on �ֲ��ý’ Russell Street Track should all be in place early next week.

Then the surface has to rest for 30 days, allowing sunlight to cook off a paraffin coating from manufacturing, before it can be striped. That paintwork, using a proprietary product made by the track-surface manufacturer, will be the final step in the project. The paint dries to the touch in as few as 10 minutes and as many as 30, depending on weather, but needs up to three days before it’s ready for use.

The Mondo Sportflex Super X 720, a two-layer product produced by the same Italian firm that supplied the track’s original surface 21 years ago, was delivered on July 25 by eight tractor-trailer rigs, and installation began the following day.

While �ֲ��ý’ varsity track and field teams won’t use the facility till spring, there’s still time pressure on the resurfacing project, from the soccer program, whose first home games take place Sept. 10 with both men and women playing Bowdoin. Because the soccer pitch sits inside the track, players will have to walk across the track for the games, and the Mondo installation needs to be done by then.

In the meantime, notes �ֲ��ý Project Manager Paul Farnsworth, he and project contractor Miller Sports Construction of West Chester, Pa., worked with Facility Services to program the soccer field irrigation system so the track would be dry where subcontractor Wicked Flooring of Rockford, Ill. (an Illinois company with a New England name!) needed to lay Mondo each day. (Watered every other night, the grass field is divided into 16 irrigation zones that the system cycles through.)

We explained previously that gluing the Mondo into place is about as hands-on as a job can be: It’s done by one man wielding a hand tool. But it turns out that much of the Mondo work has required the armstrong method.

The rolls were unspooled and positioned by hand, stretched around the curves by hand, and their edges trimmed and joined by hand — again, by a single worker with a hand tool.

Placement of the new Mondo surface on the Russell Street Track was well underway by the morning of July 28. (Paul Farnsworth/�ֲ��ý College)

Tim Moehling of Wicked Flooring uses a forklift to move a 50-foot roll of Mondo track surface on July 28. (Jay Burns/�ֲ��ý College)

A team from an Illinois company with a great New England name, Wicked Flooring, of Rockford, lays out the new surface on the Russell Street Track on July 28. The concrete blocks will be used to hold the edges of the surface down while glue dries and cooler air causes the Mondo surface to contract. (Jay Burns/�ֲ��ý College)

Corey Ernst of Wicked Flooring, the Illinois-based subcontractor laying the Mondo surface on the Russell Street Track, hand-trims an edge to ensure a perfect fit. (Jay Burns/�ֲ��ý College)

Workers purposely overlap the Mondo sections to allow for expansion, then trim the sections to fit. (Jay Burns/�ֲ��ý College)

The label on an unopened roll of Mondo Sportflex Super X 720, the new running surface on the Russell Street Track. (Jay Burns/�ֲ��ý College)

On a day when our colleague Jay Burns, �ֲ��ý Communications editorial director, was photographing progress at the track, the Wicked Flooring cutter-trimmer was Corey Ernst. Burns learned that all told, Ernst would make more than a mile of trims, changing the blade in his knife every 30 feet.

He asked Ernst if he gets into a flow, in the psychological sense. “Yeah,” Ernst said. “You kinda have to, if you’re going to do this work.”

As the 50-foot strips are unrolled and placed side by side, workers slightly overlap the sections to allow for expansion in their width. Then Ernst comes through, trimming the overlaps. After the surface is glued in place, the seams are weighted down with blocks.

Not yet assembled, this energy-saving dry cooler will make use of cool outdoor temperatures to help regulate the humidity (by using cool air to condense moisture in the HVAC system) inside Olin Arts Center. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Elsewhere on Farnsworth’s summer chore list, the upgrade of the heating, ventilating, and air conditioning system at the Olin Arts Center is progressing. In the �ֲ��ý College Museum of Art, new in-wall insulation has been placed and new air diffusers and related piping installed above the ceilings.

Still to be delivered are central chillers and an air handler for the HVAC system. In the meantime, rental HVAC equipment will both enable technicians to balance flows within the revamped air-handling network and keep building occupants comfortable.

These new bleachers at the Campus Avenue Field were nearly complete on Aug. 3. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

This being August, a few projects on Farnsworth’s list are wrapping up. The new bleachers at the Campus Avenue Field are nearly finished. And the plumbing upgrades in Page Hall are complete. These included not just the replacement of the original 1957 toilets with water-conserving 21st-century models, but the substitution of water-bottle fillers for the porcelain drinking fountains on each floor — which, Farnsworth quips, “came over on the Mayflower.”

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes queries and comments about current, past, future, and parallel-universe construction at �ֲ��ý. Write to dhubley@bates.edu, putting “Campus Construction” or “While the autoclave is delayed, couldn’t they clave manually?” in the subject line.

Floor show: Two different types of floor surface, built at different times, meet at this site of a future rest room in Chase Hall. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Campus Construction Update: April 15, 2022

Doug Hubley — Thu, 14 Apr 2022 12:03:59 +0000

The weeks leading up to Commencement have their own extraordinary excitement. It’s an electric current that tickles every campus constituency — seniors and their families, college staff who have befriended the graduates-to-be, and, of course, the faculty who have taught and guided those students for years.

But the run-up to May 29 and Commencement 2022 offers a unique treat that Campus Construction Update would like to take personally: The removal of the construction-site fence that since last July has surrounded Dana Chemistry Hall, now just Dana Hall, while the 57-year-old building has undergone a thorough renovation.

Since we began construction reporting, eons ago, we have griped about site fences because they block our probing camera and snooping eyes. (A stepladder helps us peep over the fence. We don’t talk about the stilts.)

Payette green is the color of some walls and flooring in and around Dana Hall restrooms. This is the first floor. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

The primary entrance to the Dana Hall construction site. The fencing is scheduled for removal the week of May 23. (In nice weather, Campus Construction Update has spent many happy hours in the Adirondack chairs.) (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Coathooks and cubbies for student use are among the built-in furnishings broadly known as casework. Shown is the corridor giving access to second-floor restrooms. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Hello, young louvers: Guarding air intakes for the Dana Hall HVAC system, the louvers at center were installed earlier this month. It was the first time since last summer that those openings had permanent coverings. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

An artist’s pallet: Composition in masonry near the future site of an HVAC water chlller at Dana Hall. Note the 1971 ivy stone to the right of center. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

The darker gray contraptions are HVAC exhaust fans newly installed in Dana’s attic. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Green data cables are bundled in a first-floor information technology closet. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Payette, the architectural firm that designed both the new Bonney Science Center and the renovation of Dana Hall, specified a pale gray paint for expanses of ceiling where utilities infrastructure is exposed. The visual effect is a sort of industrial chic. The loose wrapping is insulation around air-supply ducts, and the silvery gizmo is a fire sprinkler — nowadays they’re mounted on hoses so they can be moved for easy access to nearby items needing service. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Steam from the campus central heating plant enters the Dana Hall heating system through the opening in the basement wall at center. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

But now Chris Streifel, project manager for the Dana renovation and the strategic realignment of �ֲ��ý science facilities of which it’s a part, tells us that around May 23, the green fabric and chain-link fence around Dana will go away — to which we say, Huzzah! (Streifel also points out that around that same time, a similar fence will arise around Chase Hall as a major makeover of that building begins. To which we say: Drat! Drat!)

In fact, Streifel notes, the Dana project could reach “substantial completion” — a contractual milestone where project management firm Consigli Construction returns legal control of the building to �ֲ��ý — about a month after the fence goes away. That will begin a race to the finish that includes moving furniture, supplies, and people into Dana in time to reopen the building in time for the new academic year. (The college will also need a certificate of occupancy from the city of Lewiston.)

With a few notable exceptions, a characteristic of the renovation has been its focus on the building’s interior. But the site fence removal comes as the project team starts giving more love to Dana’s exterior and surroundings. A conspicuous change will be the placement, at the wall facing Hedge Hall, of a chiller to supply cold water that will help regulate air temperatures inside. Starting early this month, masons have made good progress on the chiller foundation and a beauty wall for the installation, and the machine itself should be in place before the end of April.

Concrete soon to be placed in the wooden form will create a base for an HVAC water chiller at Dana’s east wall, facing Hedge Hall. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Gendron & Gendron, a local company familiar to our regular readers, will soon begin a round of site work entailing drainage infrastructure, land contouring, and finally restoration of plantings and other amenities. And a general cleanup of the site will begin on the Historic Quad side of the site — the side facing the college’s Commencement venue — and proceed toward Alumni Walk.

“We expect to have things looking pretty decent for Commencement,” says Streifel. “We’ll have snow fences around to keep people off the freshly seeded lawns, and there may still be some plant-related things to do, but it’ll look a lot more like it normally does.”

So what’s happening inside Dana? The big news is a predicted surge of what the pros call casework: built-in furnishings ranging from lab benches and fume hoods to shelves and student cubbies, some of which have already been installed.

Coathooks and cubbies for student use are among the built-in furnishings broadly known as casework. Shown is the corridor giving access to second-floor restrooms. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

“There’s a pretty substantial casework package in this building,” says Streifel. It’s proportionately smaller than what went into the new Bonney Science Center, because Dana doesn’t have research labs, “but nevertheless there are five teaching labs that have a pretty significant quantity of laboratory case work.” Bedcolab of Laval, Quebec, is providing the lab-specific furnishings.

In terms of overall progress, the third floor is a bit behind the first and second (it will get a trophy anyway, we’ve been assured), and that’s where workers from Roland’s Drywall will be ending their primary contribution to the Dana project as they finish soffits around the ceiling perimeters. The third level is also where most of the remaining utility rough-ins are still being made.

On the second and first levels, meanwhile, all manner of surface treatments have blossomed. Much of the final floor covering has been laid in the first story — medium gray rubber-like tiles for most areas, but restrooms and adjacent corridors are receiving the eye-popping lime-popsicle green that’s a visual signature of Payette, the project design firm for both Dana and Bonney. Textured temporary covers are protecting the new tiles from construction activities.

Suspended power in a first-floor classroom. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

These canisters hold sand that will filter the water supply into Dana Hall. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Ceiling grids have been hung in much of Dana Hall. In this second-floor classroom, taking a break are workers for Roland’s Drywall. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

As the Dana Hall renovation nears its end, the site fence is not long for this world. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Shown are two colors of floor tiles awaiting placement in Dana Hall. The Payette-green tiles will be used in and around restrooms, as well as for accents elsewhere. The blue and orange areas are temporary protective coverings atop new tiles. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

This rain-blurred photo shows where a chiller for the Dana Hall HVAC system will be placed in the coming weeks. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

The suspended ceiling grid in a second-floor classroom. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

One of two main lobbies in Dana Hall, this second-floor space opens onto the Historic Quad. A lobby one level down and at the far end of the building faces Alumni Walk. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Payette green also enlivens wall tiles and paint in and around the restrooms, as well as accents in stairways and elsewhere. But white and pale gray are dominant paint colors, with the latter providing visual unity to dense conglomerations of ceiling pipes and ducts.

Terminal utility connections — e.g., wall outlets, light fixtures, water faucets — are abounding on the two lower levels. Likewise are suspended ceilings, with most of the metal grids and lots of tiles in place, in particular tiles associated with fittings such as sprinklers or occupancy sensors. Miles of cable — telecom, data, audio-visual, fire response, security — have been pulled into place and terminated, with miles more to come.

Meanwhile, in the attic and basement, the mind-boggling drive to build out building-wide systems goes on. In the fourth-story attic, which is more of a metal jungle than ever, the two HVAC exhaust fans are in place and undergoing connection to their duct and electrical networks. The big primary air handler is sprouting hookups in every direction, including heavy steel pipes that will bring heat from the campus steam plant into the system. Steamfitting in the basement, where campus steam enters the building, and in the attic is largely complete.

Given this frenzy of engineering, major equipment startups and system-wide tests aren’t too far off. “We’re probably two or three weeks away,” says Streifel. “The big air handler will likely be the first item.”

The heavy black pipes bring steam to and from the Dana Hall air handler in the attic. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Overall, “Consigli has got a pretty good game plan going,” he continues. In terms of workers on site, “we’ve been in the range of 60 to 70 persons per day for a while. So it’s pretty busy. Dana has about half the space of Bonney, and that’s a little bit more than half of the people that we had at peak at Bonney.

“So that means there’re a lot of people working in the building and they’re spread out all over the place. You walk into any room and you’re likely to find somebody there or not far away. So it’s moving along quite well in an organized-chaos type of approach.”

Finally, we told you last month that doors were among construction components made scarcer by COVID-related supply chain delays. Apparently that conga line is once again crossing the ballroom floor, though, because this week’s Dana tour revealed 70 or so new doors stockpiled for installation.

Streifel allows that the Dana project may indeed — mixed metaphor alert! — be out of the supply-chain woods. By now, “there aren’t too many things that haven’t been ordered already,” he says. “It would be inappropriate for me to say no, we’re all good, but I think we’re in pretty good shape.”

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes queries and comments about current, past, future, timeless, and “that never happened — or did it?” construction at �ֲ��ý. Write to dhubley@bates.edu, putting “Campus Construction” or “Suspended power? Wire they doing that?” in the subject line.

Doug Hubley is a writer and musician living in Portland, Maine.

Once in short supply, interior doors for the Dana Hall renovation are now abundant. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Campus Construction Update: March 3, 2022

Doug Hubley — Wed, 02 Mar 2022 15:43:01 +0000

Chase Hall at �ֲ��ý College: beloved, iconic, historic.

And user-friendly? Well, probably not — thanks to unwelcoming entrances and a confounding interior layout that involves nine floor levels and multiple additions, all stitched together by a labyrinth of corridors and stairways.

But a plan is now in motion to address these challenges. Late next month, the college will close Chase and begin a substantial renovation involving as much as half of the building’s floor space, as well as a systems upgrade and plenty of cosmetic work. (This will be the sixth addition or substantial renovation in the building’s 102-year history, according to the project announcement.)

This architect’s rendering shows the central stair, a sort of three-dimensional crossroads in Chase Hall near the Office of Intercultural Education. (Courtesy of Canal 5 Studio)

Specifically, the 16-month makeover will:

Revamp the interior to make Chase a campus hub for most student services;
Improve accessibility, wayfinding, and circulation, notably through the reconfiguration of building entrances and the installation of new stairways and a third elevator;
Renew the building’s utilities infrastructure, portions of which haven’t been operable for years;
And add comfortable, technologically enabled multi-purpose spaces.

Chase will reopen at the start of the 2023–24 academic year. The most conspicuous results of the project will be the two rebuilt entrances on Campus Avenue and one on Franklin Walk, where new floor plans will improve access, both visual and physical, into the building. In a dramatic change, the main entry on the avenue, near the Kenison Gate, will be lowered to ground level.

Currently, a flight of steps there brings you up into the building, where you find yourself enclosed in a stairwell. After the renovation, you’ll enter Chase onto a landing that invites entry deeper into the building — thanks to new sightlines, new stairs, and better exposure for the existing elevator.

An architect’s rendering of Chase Hall’s main Campus Avenue entrance, which will be rebuilt at ground level during the 2022–23 renovation for easier building access. (Courtesy of Canal 5 Studio)

A similar interior arrangement is planned for the other end of the building, including the current and future home of the Office of Intercultural Education. This will entail the installation of a new central stairway and elevator. These changes will result in increased visibility for the OIE, a vital campus gathering place.

The building entrance onto Franklin Walk (the extension of Franklin Street that runs between Chase and Muskie Archives) will be landscaped and furnished for al fresco relaxation and equipped with a new ramp that will make the existing loading dock ADA-compliant.

A project goal is to reinvigorate Chase as a student resource that will be busy 24 hours a day. Built as a campus social center, the hall retains that identity, but there was a period when several of its student-focused functions moved elsewhere — Commons in 2008, and Post & Print first to Lane Hall and then, in 2016, to the new Kalperis Hall along with the College Store.

Chase remained busy after dark with student activities, such as events in the former dining hall, and student organizations like the Student newspaper and the Outing Club, but the building became a little too quiet during the day.

This rendering shows the new elevator serving the east end of Chase Hall, near the Office for Intercultural Education. (Courtesy of Canal 5 Studio)

“We took a look at the campus to figure out, with all these functions being separated, how could we reinvigorate Chase,” explains Pam Wichroski, �ֲ��ý’ director of capital planning and construction. “That was when we recreated the [current] vision for Chase, which was to have more student-focused programs in the building to make it more active and viable 24 hours.”

�ֲ��ý brought in Boston’s Ann Beha Architects to help reimagine the building’s role. The 2014 relocation of OIE into its popular Chase location provided a spark of inspiration, and a few years back, the college brought in other student services as well — Campus Life, Residential Life and Health Education, and some elements of the Purposeful Work program.

Post-renovation, the Office of Community Standards and the entirety of the Center for Purposeful Work will join the other service offices in Chase. These will occupy the former site of the College Store in the basement and the equivalent area one flight up, near the loading dock.

The former Dining Services loading dock and surrounding area will be beautified and converted into an ADA-compliant entrance in the 2022–23 renovation of Chase Hall. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

And Chase, of course, will remain the site for student activities and organizations, which will find new levels of comfort, polish, and technological capability at their disposal.

While Chase is closed for the renovation, most current occupants — student organizations, Campus Life, the OIE, and Residence Life and Health Education — will occupy temporary quarters a couple of blocks away, at 96 Campus Ave. Situated next to the Campus Avenue Field, this modern building belonged to St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center and housed offices and a daycare center until its recent purchase by �ֲ��ý. (The Bobcat Den will be closed during the project, but will reopen in its longtime space thereafter.)

The project architect for the Chase project is Canal 5 Studio — a Portland, Maine, firm whose prior �ֲ��ý experience includes Bobcat Den renovations in 2012, the new OIE offices in Chase in 2014, and new Lane Hall quarters for the �ֲ��ý Communications Office in 2018. Consigli Construction, the college’s longtime construction management partner, will handle the Chase project even as it wraps up the Dana Hall renovation this summer.

Starting in June, the Bobcat Express pickup location and the intercity bus stop in front of Chase will be displaced by construction fencing, with new arrangements to be announced.

Steady progress: Across the Historic Quad from Chase, the renovation of Dana Hall remains in what �ֲ��ý Project Manager Chris Streifel describes as “that routine of just steady progress.”

New wallboard and wall paint in Dana 119. The green cable on spools at left will be used for digital network connections. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

“There’s not a lot changing or a lot of drama, really. So that’s good,” says Streifel. “That’s what we want.”

This doesn’t mean that nothing has happened during the nearly two months since we last checked in (although we would like to believe that we’re essential to any construction work on campus).

Quite the opposite. For instance, since last week, Dana Hall has been getting its electricity through a brand-new circuit-breaker panel, which is the size of a refrigerator and lives in the basement. (Which is no place for a refrigerator.) It replaces a unit that measured about 18 by 36 inches and was last seen sitting on the concrete floor awaiting oblivion.

Which leads us to point out that a fair amount of recent progress in Dana is discernible by what’s no longer there.

This example of a utility rough-in shows outlet boxes mounted on wall studs separating two third-floor Dana Hall classrooms. An electrician works in the background. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Masons are pretty much done with so-called block infill in Dana Hall — that is, using concrete blocks to fill unwanted holes and fill out the borders of new openings. Capped with a new steel lintel, this opening will give students using a new writeup room a view of the third-floor lobby. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

A view of Dana Hall’s tidy second-floor lobby, seen from the main entrance near the Historic Quad. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

In Dana Hall’s second-floor lobby, a drill on a section of wall frame awaits its next task. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

A carton of actuators for HVAC components — or, to use the technical terms, gizmos that hook up to thingamabobs. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

An electrician pulls cable into a first-floor breaker box, one of several in this corridor. (But do the cables ever pull back?) (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Dana Hall’s new main electrical panel lives in the basement. It went into service during the week of Feb. 21. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

This circuit-breaker panel for Dana’s emergency electricity supply is wearing a lockout-tagout safety system. To protect an electrician working on specific circuits, the breakers with the orange lockouts and the yellow cord can’t be turned on. That electrician, whose name is on the paper tag, has the only key for the padlock on the red gizmo that can release the circuits. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

The first thing we noticed during a visit on the last day of February was how tidy Dana’s interior was. There was much less stuff to be seen — fewer ladders, fewer wood fragments and bits of wire insulation on the floor, many fewer pallets loaded with building materials. (There’s nothing like using supplies to get them out of your way.)

Contributing to this shipshape impression was the way flat surfaces have come along. For starters, there are simply more of them, as wallboard continues to appear on new partition walls. Down on the first floor, there’s even some new paint going onto new walls.

Floors have been leveled and are awaiting their final coverings, which will be placed late in the game to save on wear and tear.

The masonry work on the brick and concrete-block interior walls has been completed. That is, all the openings for new doors and windows have been cut and finished, and all the unwanted old openings have been filled. So the masons have gone, taking with them their pallets of new blocks and buckets of mortar.

A wallboard installer “muds” a seam near a first-floor window. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

The exception to this tidying trend is in the attic, where the installation of equipment serving the building’s heating, ventilation, and cooling needs is ramping up. New piping runs all over the place, much of it supported by metal frameworks, and there’s more to come. Engineers have brought in heat exchangers and a variety of pumps, and shiny new sheet-metal ducts cling to the ceiling.

And of course that attic space, which for a brief time last year was open enough for a sock hop, is dominated by the giant HVAC machine, still wrapped in plastic.

In short, says Streifel, the attic will fill up. “It won’t be quite as full as it was before, but it’ll be similar.”

Dana Hall’s attic facing Hathorn Hall. Pipes and machinery have proliferated since Campus Construction Update’s last visit, and there’s much more to come. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Finally, we’ve learned a little more about COVID-related supply-chain problems that could affect the pace of construction at �ֲ��ý. “What’s been unsaid so far is how well the construction team has navigated supply-chain issues that are very real,” says Streifel, referring to staff at construction management company Consigli and at the project architectural firm Payette, among others.

Getting timely deliveries of glass became problematic even during the building of the Bonney Science Center, which was finished last summer. And a current focus of concern is doors and door components.

Pre-pandemic, says Streifel, one could expect orders for such items to be filled in four to six weeks. Now we’re “seeing more like 12 weeks.” He adds, “One of the things that we were notified about, a week or so ago, is that there’s no longer an expediting process.”

That is, in the case of what you might call a door emergency — say, a replacement is needed in a hurry because a dimension needs to be changed — there’s no longer the option to get products faster by paying more. You just have to wait.

Fortunately, “we’ve avoided what could be some pretty challenging lead times. So I’m confident the team is doing the right things to try to avoid them,” Streifel says — “thinking ahead and making firm decisions at a much earlier time frame than what we’ve traditionally had to do.”

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update loves to hear from you. Please send your questions, comments, and reminiscences about construction at �ֲ��ý College to dhubley@bates.edu, with “Campus Construction” or “Insert Joke Here” in the subject line. (It’s a meta-joke! Get it?)

The pencil outline surrounding the lower bracket shows the location of Dana Hall’s original electrical panel, in the basement. Where the old panel was the size of a kitchen cabinet, the new one is bigger than a refrigerator. Say, we’re hungry! (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Campus Construction Update: Jan. 13, 2022

Doug Hubley — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 15:15:44 +0000

If every week brought the kind of excitement sparked up in late November by the hoisting of a large air-handling machine into Dana Hall’s attic, Campus Construction Update would be incapacitated by nervous exhaustion.

But these days, fortunately, the Dana renovation is about steady, soothing overall progress and not show-stopping crane choreography.

If we want to get all numerical about that progress, �ֲ��ý construction administrator Jacob Kendall estimates that on a typical work day, there are 50 or 60 workers on site representing 10 trades. “There will be a body in every corner” getting something done, he says.

We’ve written previously about the 3-D computer models used to guide the actual work of building construction or renovation. This rendering depicts a variety of utility connections in the basement of Dana Hall. The two gray cylinders are water heaters for sinks, etc. The blue triangle in the center activates the emergency shower overhead, provided in case someone comes in contact with a hazardous substance. (Courtesy of Consigli Construction)

Such as? “It’s all that rough stuff,” says �ֲ��ý project manager Chris Streifel — “rough” in the sense of coarse. “There’s still some work to be done on leveling floors. There’s building [interior] walls, getting them ready and closing them in. There are structural things on the ceilings.”

“That’s how we’ll go for probably another month or so,” by which point it should be easier to get a sense of the future Dana as rooms are partitioned into their final configurations. “There’s a lot of work to do, but it’ll come together pretty quick in a lot of spaces.

“It’s not imminent, but it’s not a year away.”

New utilities installations near Dana’s Alumni Walk entry. The white stuff is insulation covering water pipes and the silvery stuff is insulation on HVAC ducts. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

A heavy plastic sheet covers the large opening in Dana Hall’s east gable through which a large air-handling machine was loaded in November. The silver pipe is feeding warm air from a portable heater into the building. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Plastic-protected air ducts and fan-coil units are stored in a Dana Hall classroom. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Dana Hall’s attic, facing Parker Hall. Behind the photographer is the elevator and the new HVAC machine, which takes up a third or half of the attic. Additional air-handling equipment and other utilities — note the two pumps at center right — will occupy the space shown. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

The ruddy plywood inserts between the studs in this restroom-to-be are called “blocking.” Because wallboard doesn’t hold screws very well, blocking provides a sturdy backing for attaching features like mirrors or railings. Fireproofing imparts the red tint. Note that some plumbing and electrical wiring — examples of utilities rough-ins — are in place. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Shown in what will be a third-floor write-up room, “Ace” is a smoke eater — a gizmo that removes smoke created by welding. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Pipe hangers on pallets, wall studs on a cart, and HVAC components stockpiled in a third-floor classroom. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

A view of Dana 106, which will be a lab for intro chemistry. The gray item at center right is a door frame. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

This section of ceiling is divided between two treatments: The left-hand side will be covered with suspended tiles and the right will be left open, with pipes and ducts visible. The fuzzy material at center right is K13, a spray-on acoustic insulation that will also serve as a visual treatment. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

New to Dana’s basement, this expansion tank is part of the mechanism that will use steam from the campus heating plant to warm air for the building. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

The first-floor area nearest the camera will house a kitchenette, mailboxes, and a copier. Plumbing will occupy the space at rear. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

And of course there’s always the impressive drive to hang utilities apparatus from ceilings in all five levels of the building. (So, even with the air handler out of sight, an observer still has plenty of looking upward to do.) In fact, there are so many new pipes, conduits, air ducts, etc., destined to crisscross the ceilings that we asked Streifel whether the renovation would leave Dana with substantially more such infrastructure after the renovation than before it.

The answer is an empirical and qualified “yes.” Post renovation, there “probably is a little bit more, just because building systems are more complicated” than they used to be, Streifel says.

In addition, a major gain is coming with the new HVAC system, which addresses longtime shortcomings in the previous setup. Back in the day, Dana was infamous for its spotty temperature regulation, which was addressed but never quite remedied by upgrades to the original 1965 air handling machinery and the addition of several supplementary systems, some of them serving single labs.

But after the makeover, thanks to the creation of a single, state-of-the-art system, Dana occupants will enjoy “heating and cooling throughout the building consistently, as opposed to pockets of cooling [or warming] here and there,” Streifel says.

And in addition to the new attic HVAC machine, the latest system will comprise masses of ductwork, water and steam pipes, and overhead fan-coil units that provide zonal temperature control. A tour of the building reveals heaps of such equipment, intakes sealed against dust with attractive blue plastic, awaiting installation.

Hangers for utility infrastructure sit on a pallet awaiting installation at certain points designated by the markings. They will hang from the threaded rods, which have been cut to specified lengths so that several pipe or conduit runs can be “stacked” in a given space. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Reductions in other utilities, though, will somewhat offset all that new overhead HVAC metal. This is driven by a change in the building’s mission: Because research that had taken place in Dana has been moved to the new Bonney Science Center and Dana’s new labs will be oriented more toward introductory instruction (in biology and chemistry), they won’t require the previous density of domestic water supplies, drainage, etc., that was present before.

Having addressed a defining question of these troubled times — which version of Dana, past or future, has more pipes hanging from the ceilings? — we can now move on to another overhead process, begun in December, that may be a bit more consequential. Steelworkers for the local subcontractor MZ Metal Works are nearly finished installing short girders that on one end are fastened to Dana’s structural steel skeleton, and at the other are bolted into the building’s masonry exterior walls.

Manufactured by American Steel Fabricators of Greenfield, N.H., and sometimes called “clips,” these units improve “the seismic resistance of the building,” Streifel explains — that is, their stability during an earthquake. They impart additional rigidity to the structure and “help keep things in place and straight so they’re providing their maximum load capacity.”

Another ceiling operation that’s just about done is the spraying-on of a material called K13. This provides both sound absorption and a kind of industrial-chic visual effect that makes an open ceiling look pretty good, despite all the pipes and wires (and eventually, laced-together pairs of sneakers) dangling up there. It’s one of the elements used by architectural firm Payette, designer of both the Dana renovation and the new Bonney Center, to provide visual unity between the two buildings.

The reddish-brown girders are so-called clips. Recently installed, they tie together Dana Hall’s steel structure and exterior masonry to improve resistance to seismic stresses. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

No delays in virus delivery: Speaking of defining questions of these troubled times — but seriously now — we wondered how the pandemic is affecting workers and the pace of work at Dana. It’s certainly making some workers ill or otherwise keeping them off the job, says Streifel, but the project remains on schedule — thus far. “It’s adding strain. We haven’t gotten to the point where we’ve had to make any adjustments, but it’s a real possibility that we’re monitoring.”

As was the case during Bonney Science Center construction, project management firm Consigli Construction is responsible for safety protocols on the Dana site.

And what about snarls in the supply chain? With construction likely to be complete by early summer, “there are still plenty of opportunities for things to go sideways,” Streifel replies, “but so far, so good.” He adds, “a lot of that has been managed by just being more proactive, ordering things much earlier, answering questions much earlier.”

In fact, the timely Nov. 29 delivery of that giant complex air-handling unit was a Dana success story in the global realm of supply-chain woes. “That’s no small deal,” he says, pointing to the way the semiconductor shortage has gummed up automakers. “That’s where a lot of the long lead times have really started — things that have so many different components, so a lot of different opportunities” for things to go off the rails. (So far, by the way, we haven’t heard about any shortages of chains linked to global supply chain issues. Or maybe, as Gerry Goffin wrote and The Cookies sang, they ain’t the kind that you can see.)

The Hedge Hall–facing end of Dana’s attic. The plastic-wrapped object at left is the HVAC machine installed in late November. At top are steam pipes that will connect to the machine. The steel plates in the foreground cover holes in the concrete floor — because the attic is not a public space, the plates will be given a beveled border for safety reasons but otherwise left as they are. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Anyhoo, back to the topic of progress. If the crane acrobatics gave that HVAC unit a certain charisma it will never have again (except perhaps in the fond eyes of Campus Construction Update), its delivery and activation, more importantly, will make possible all kinds of progress in the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing installations, and by extension, on most fronts throughout the Dana renovation.

“It allows us to bring all the big ductwork up there, to start wiring up all the power — I think there are nine electrical circuits that connect to the various aspects of that machine,” says Streifel. “And I don’t know how many different pipes in and out.

“All of that can happen because now they have set points” on the air handler that they can connect to. “They could have run them close by before that, and just waited for the machine to be there, but this makes it that much easier.”

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update loves to hear from you. Please send your questions, comments, and reminiscences about construction at �ֲ��ý College to dhubley@bates.edu, with “Campus Construction” or “A lot of what you write about is really over your head, isn’t it?” in the subject line.

A chiller designed to supply cold water to Dana’s HVAC system will be placed at this site, on the Hedge Hall side of the building, during the spring. The duct at top is bringing warmth from a portable heater inside. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Campus Construction Update: Dec. 2, 2021

Doug Hubley — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 14:00:31 +0000

Before dawn on Monday, unseen by most members of the campus community, mechanized forces executed something like a military pincers movement at �ֲ��ý.

Objective: Dana Chemistry Hall.

But this was no invasion. (It’s just that we’ve always wanted to write military history.) Instead, the occasion was the delivery and installation of new HVAC machinery that will heat, ventilate, and air-condition Dana for the foreseeable future. The operation was a major advance in an in-depth transformation of the building that began in July and will continue through next spring.

A hydraulic crane belonging to The Cote Corporation of Auburn approached Dana via Campus Avenue and the service road that crosses the Library Quad. Meanwhile, three flatbed tractor-trailers took the direct route, from College Street down Alumni Walk, where they parked inside the construction-site fence to keep truck activity separate from foot traffic (and skateboarders, cyclists, etc.).

Two flatbeds carried the seven major components of the HVAC machine, aka air handler (including the somewhat miraculous enthalpy wheel that we described last month). The third conveyed the equipment that Cote staff needed to hoist and place the boxy, bare-metal HVAC pieces.

The early start accommodated a few hours of prep for the big lift. The mobile crane, a Grove product sold by Milwaukee’s Manitowoc Co., needed to be leveled and blocked for stability. This was even more important than usual because the crane was sited partially on the slope descending from the Historic Quad to Alumni Walk.

In addition, trucks and individual air-handler parts had to be shifted around so that the parts could be placed into the building in the correct order.

Cote Corp.’s mobile crane was ready for action at Dana Chem early on Nov. 29. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Tight quarters inside the site fence for a tractor-trailer carrying Dana Chem HVAC components. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

A Cote Corp. employee is shown on a flatbed bearing components of the Dana Chemistry Hall air handler around 8:30 a.m. Nov. 29. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

The enthalpy wheel and its housing sit with other HVAC machinery on a flatbed awaiting loading into Dana Chemistry Hall on Nov. 29. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

�ֲ��ý Project Manager Chris Streifel watches progress three stories down as a Cote Corp. rigging crew prepares to start hoisting HVAC machinery to Dana Chemistry Hall’s attic on Nov. 29. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

A crane hoists one part of the new HVAC machine into Dana Chemistry Hall on Nov. 29, 2021. The machine has seven parts that were hoisted into the attic during the day. (H. Jay Burns/�ֲ��ý College)

Workers watch as a crane floats an air-handler component (center) toward the attic of Dana Chemistry Hall. (Jacob Kendall/�ֲ��ý College)

A piece of the new HVAC machine nears the opening in the Dana Chemistry Hall attic. (H. Jay Burns/�ֲ��ý College)

At left, a Cote Corp. rigger operates a pair of winches while a colleague keeps an eye on the HVAC component that’s being pulled into the Dana Chemistry Hall attic. (Jacob Kendall/�ֲ��ý College)

A Cote Corp. rigger wields a jack as the HVAC unit’s enthalpy wheel is tugged into the attic of Dana Chemistry Hall. (Jacob Kendall/�ֲ��ý College)

One of the largest components of the Dana Chem HVAC system is winched into the attic around 11:30 on Nov. 29. (Chris Streifel/�ֲ��ý College)

The Dana Chem air handler installation is nearly complete in this image taken around 2 p.m. on Nov. 29. (Jacob Kendall/�ֲ��ý College)

In the jargon of rigging and heavy lifting, it’s called “picking” when a given load is attached to the crane and lifted. So the picking (and hopefully grinning) commenced around 10:30 a.m. and continued into early afternoon.

In addition to Cote and �ֲ��ý personnel, people on the scene came from Warren Mechanical, the Maine firm that will actually assemble the air-handler and get it running; and Consigli Construction, which is managing the Dana project for �ֲ��ý.

The air-handler takes up about half of the attic, east of the elevator shaft. The pieces came in through a big hole facing Hedge Hall that was made even bigger for this operation. (The hole, Dana’s once and future HVAC air intake, will be smallified later.) The installation process, in brief, was that first, the crane would float a given part up to the hole while workers on the ground handled lines to steady the load.

Workers tend to a just-installed section of Dana Chemistry Hall’s new air handler. The concrete blocks shown above left of center enclose the building’s elevator shaft. (Jacob Kendall/�ֲ��ý College)

Then riggers would fasten cables to the piece and winch it into place on a frame of steel beams. Metal rods were used as rollers under the HVAC components.

It was a tight fit for a few units, including the one containing the enthalpy wheel, notes �ֲ��ý Project Manager Chris Streifel. “There was just an inch and a half” of clearance for the biggest pieces. One of them rubbed on the ceiling as it came in.

“They had to go to a smaller rod,” he says. “They had three-quarter-inch rods that they were rolling it along on, and they had to go down to three-eighths of an inch just to give themselves that little bit of extra room to clear the ceiling and get it all the way down to the end.”

The load-in was finished by 2 p.m. or so. “Then the next thing will be to start connecting all of the different ducts and pipes and wires and controls, and everything else that goes to it. That’ll be the story the next several months,” Streifel says.

Wallboard placement around the tops of walls has begun. These so-called firetops come first in the wallboarding schedule because, as shown here, utility connections can’t be installed until the tops are in place. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

New water heaters in the basement of Dana Chemistry Hall. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Masonry toothing in progress. Two bricks have been removed from this doorway, forming “tooths” — not teeth. Others have been drilled preparatory to chiseling them out. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

An example of masonry toothing, with new concrete blocks filling out the toothed edge of a newly cut doorway. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

You rung? There’s no shortage of ladders in Dana Chem’s Room 119. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Metal wall studs delineate the new restrooms on Dana’s first floor. With the elevator at the approximate center of the space behind the studs, handicapped facilities will be built to the left and general-use facilities to the right. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Flooring installers touch up a patch of self-leveling compound in a second-story Dana Chem classroom. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Stacked on a pallet in a second-floor classroom and swathed in plastic to keep dust out of their innards, these fan-coil units will make it possible to tailor air temperatures to specific areas in Dana Chem. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Some tooths: On other fronts (once you get started, these military metaphors are hard to avoid), “we’re at that steady-state portion of the job, where things are going to look the same for a while. All the same things happening on all floors,” says Streifel. “There’s a lot of progress, but it’s a little bit hard to see it.”

The second floor remains the exemplar, as work is furthest advanced there. For example, that’s where the hanging of wallboard has begun — albeit just at the tops of metal wall studs thus far. Called “firetops” because their use is embrangled with municipal fire codes, these board sections share space with utility runs and therefore tend to be placed just prior to those runs.

“They like to do them first,” Streifel explains, because it’s easier to cut openings in wallboard for pipes and wires than “to try to fit pieces around them.”

Speaking of things mechanical, electrical, and plumbical — sorry, plumbing-related — we were touring Dana’s ground floor with construction administrator Jacob Kendall when we spotted cryptic markings on the concrete under foot. Kendall explained that the lines, letters, and numbers indicated where MEP fittings would be placed…on the ceiling above.

A laser pointer placed on these marks will guide workers as they install utility hardware on the ceiling. The boot belongs to �ֲ��ý construction administrator Jacob Kendall. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

A self-leveling laser pointer set upright on a floor mark, he said, would light up the spot overhead where the fitting would go. And this speaks to one of the differences between constructing a new building and revamping an existing one.

In a new building, it’s more expedient to place fittings while the floors are being fabricated. And you work from the floor above: That is, if you want to hang a pipe from a second-story ceiling, you initiate that attachment on the third-story floor decking.

In Dana or any other old building, though (not that Dana is just any old building!), it’s just more practical — thanks to the laser pointers — to use the second-floor floor, if you will, as a template for implanting MEP installations into the second-floor ceiling.

Just a small sample of new utility connections in the basement of Dana Chem. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

More practical, but not more agreeable. “You’ve got to cut the holes, you’ve got to drill everything out of the way, as opposed to just having it cast in place” when a new building’s concrete floor slab is poured. “It’s more time-consuming. It’s more challenging. It’s dirtier,” says Streifel.

“Then there are the nuances of dimensional differences. It gets a little bit harder to be as precise in an older building during renovation just because accuracy is more challenging to maintain. You can look and say, ‘I’ve got 9-foot-6-inch ceilings here,’ but in reality, it varies everywhere.

“You have to make certain assumptions when you’re doing the design and those don’t always hold true. You’ve got to be flexible to be able to adapt to that.”

In both new and old, anyhoo, the process for pinpointing MEP locations is the same, and somewhat amazing. As we’ve written elsewhere, those locations are first determined during the creation of a 3D digital model of the building. Then that model, combined with GPS and wireless communication technology, is used to guide someone in the physical building as they use surveying equipment to find and mark all the MEP points.

Other differences between renovating existing construction and building anew? In certain trades, renovations demand a certain amount of blending new with old, and making it all look new. For instance, a technique called “toothing” is conspicuous among the masonry work in Dana. This is where you bust out alternating blocks around an opening. (The result looks like teeth, but in masonry jargon they are tooths.)

An example of masonry toothing, with new concrete blocks filling out the toothed edge of a newly cut doorway. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

So if you are filling an existing opening, you tooth around the opening so you can fit new blocks into the prevailing masonry pattern. If you’ve cut a new opening, toothing makes it easier to create a clean and consistent edge around it as you cut new blocks to fill the, er, cavities.

“There’s lots of construction [techniques] that involve the same concept as masonry toothing,” Streifel adds. A similar process will apply when the big hole in the Dana attic gable is shrunk and carpenters need to blend new wooden siding in with the old.

You even encounter it when new asphalt is laid next to old. “You don’t just butt them up together,” Streifel says. (That explains a lot about our driveway.) “On the old pavement, you grind it down and make almost a very thin set of stairs so that the new pavement butts and then overlaps and overlaps.

“That creates a joint that’s, first, more waterproof, and second, just stronger.”

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update loves to hear from you. Please send your questions, comments, and reminiscences about construction at �ֲ��ý College to dhubley@bates.edu, with “Campus Construction” or “Does Homer Simpson know you’re stealing his material?” in the subject line.

Campus Construction Update: Nov. 4, 2021

Doug Hubley — Wed, 03 Nov 2021 12:28:21 +0000

Waxing all poetic in late September, Campus Construction Update noted that “the slow pivot from destruction to construction is beginning” in the renovation of Dana Chemistry Hall.

Well, pivot completed! A little more than a month after that post, the dust, disorder, and debris of demolition are just fodder for nostalgia, and new walls are rising inside the 56-year-old building that, when renovations are done next summer, will be known simply as Dana Hall.

The demolition that figured so prominently early on in the project was complete by the second week of October. Also finished is the abatement of hazardous materials.

Now the project team is devoting all its attention to constructive ends: prepping floors for their final surfaces, which we won’t see for months; erecting partition walls; roughing in myriad utility connections; and commencing the installation of machinery, primarily HVAC, in the building’s fourth-floor attic.

“RD” stands for Roland’s Drywall Inc., the local firm building new partition walls in Dana. This sunlit scene is a second-floor classroom. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Literally and figuratively, Lakeside Concrete Cutting of Newport, Maine, has done much of the heavy lifting early in the Dana renovation. The firm demolished all the masonry walls rendered superfluous by the building redesign, and continues to remove or reconfigure concrete for utility runs, etc. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Much of the early work on the Dana Chemistry Hall project involved masonry demolition. This third-floor image shows where concrete blocks were removed to widen a doorway. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Staff from Consigli Construction, the firm managing the Dana renovation for �ֲ��ý, assess progress in a third-floor space that will be divided into two biology classrooms. The wall remnant at left is part of a shaft or “chase” containing utility connections. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

An array of new utility connections in the basement, with holes cut in the concrete for many more. The new pipes include black ones for wastewater or storm runoff; copper for domestic water; and blue for used chemical collection. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Under construction is a wall forming two active-learning classrooms on Dana’s second floor. Note the new exhaust duct and electrical conduits along the ceiling. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

A telescoping-boom forklift removes scrap steel from the Dana worksite. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

In a visual echo of the Bonney Science Center aesthetic, windows or glass walls will afford transparency to student lounges in Dana Hall. This third-floor image shows the future site of one such lounge, slightly left of center. The photographer was standing in another lounge site at the opposite end of the building. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Shown at center is a new electrical box in Dana’s basement. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

This first-floor hallway provides a sense of the “old Dana” and its confined spaces. Offices will be created along the right side and an administrative room at left. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

The crane and rigging experts from Cote Corporation of Auburn, Maine, will return to campus for that last category, likely around the end of the month. “It’s a pretty big operation,” says Chris Streifel, �ֲ��ý project manager for Dana. While the attic will accommodate a variety of machines related to temperature and humidity in the building, the dominant unit will be an air handler so big that it will be loaded in piecemeal.

The largest component will contain an intriguing gizmo called an enthalpy wheel or energy recovery wheel. Both exhaust air from the building and fresh air from the outdoors pass through the wheel as it spins, and the wheel contains substances that capture heat energy and moisture and transfer them between the airflows.

Such transfers reduce the treatment required for incoming air, thereby lightening the HVAC system’s workload. (As with the Bonney Science Center, the air in Dana will be continuously replaced.) So in summer, the wheel cools and dries incoming air, transferring heat and moisture to the exhaust. In winter, it applies heat and moisture from the exhaust to cold, dry incoming air.

Pretty neat.

Wheel of enthalpy: In a month or so, Cote Crane will be loading a new air handler through this opening into Dana’s attic. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

To get the air handler into the building, an existing opening (once and future site of a ventilation louver) that faces Hedge Hall will be embiggened. Yet, Streifel notes, “it’s going to be a very tight fit, even then.”

With that operation still weeks away, other chores in the attic are moving apace. Several parallel ribs in the new concrete floor will support the big HVAC unit. The old stainless steel exhaust stacks — a signature feature of the building’s earlier profile — have been removed. And much new wallboard has been hung, again dividing up a space that for a few weeks would have made a great dance hall.

What about the building’s three public levels? The floor prep is nearly done throughout the building, says Streifel. That prep, as we’ve reported previously, culminates in the placement of a cementitious self-leveling compound in a layer about half an inch thick.

These metal wall studs on the second level of Dana indicate where new restrooms will be placed relative to the elevator on all three floors. ADA-compatible restrooms will be built to the left of the elevator. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Preparation for the preparation, if you will, consists of grinding the old concrete slab more or less smooth, and sealing it with an epoxy mixture. (Some spots, such as former restroom locations and other concentrations of plumbing, have holes right through the old slab that have needed filling.)

In terms of all procedures, the second floor — that’s where you enter from the Historic Quad — is the furthest along. So there, for instance, most wall studs are in place, affording an outline of the completed layout.

The third floor was the last to undergo demolition, so is bringing up the rear. And the first-floor footprint is about a third larger than the second and third, thanks to the single-story section adjacent to Alumni Walk, so there’s been more to do.

Throughout Dana, mechanical-electrical-plumbing work is going strong. “They’re hanging stuff all over the place,” Streifel says. “Ductwork, electrical conduits, piping, fire protection — all of that is underway, particularly in the basement and first floors, but all floors, really.”

Mechanical room with a view: This view northeast from Dana Chem’s attic was taken on Nov. 1 through a hole in the gable that is a former and future air intake for the HVAC system. In place throughout the fall, the tent has provided shelter for various events held outside as part of �ֲ��ý’ COVID-19 precautions. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Looking ahead, he adds, “we’re going to go from starting walls to talking about finishes in a few months. By March and April, we’ll be talking about turning systems on, as opposed to a couple years,” as was the case with the much bigger, built-from-scratch Bonney Science Center.

“I would expect that we’ll be going through punch-listing and commissioning in June and July. There’s a little bit of time in July to tidy things up, finish up punch-listing, and get new furniture in. We’ll move in during August — relatively speaking, a much easier move than what we just went through” with Bonney. (Not least because so much stuff was moved from Dana to Bonney.)

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update loves to hear from you. Please send your questions, comments, and reminiscences about construction at �ֲ��ý College to dhubley@bates.edu, with “Campus Construction” or “Would more personal enthalpy make me more popular?” in the subject line.

Dana’s main entrance lobby. Note the steel decking right of center — filling a gap left by the removal of plumbing from former restrooms, the steel will be topped with concrete. New restrooms are under construction out of the frame to the right. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Campus Construction Update: Sept. 30, 2021

Doug Hubley — Wed, 29 Sep 2021 11:56:06 +0000

The goals of a construction project tend to be functional.

They’re often aesthetic, too — sometimes with poorer outcomes, but often with happy ones when, like �ֲ��ý, you plan and invest your resources thoughtfully.

Of course, construction projects create changes in myriad dimensions beyond those two. And Campus Construction Update is interested in all the ways a construction project may participate in its surroundings. But one that we find especially intriguing is also, because it’s so subjective, one of the least practical and most difficult to address: the effects on remembrance and sense of place.

The object of a yearlong major renovation, Dana Chemistry Hall is shown from Alumni Walk on a brilliant late-September morning. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

A view toward Hedge Hall from the Dana attic. Staging is in place for utility rough-ins. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Note the trenches for subfloor utilities in this former mechanical space on the first floor of Dana Chemistry Hall. This area will eventually be divided between a kitchenette/office and mechanical space. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Formerly a secure area for storing chemicals, this room will become a student lounge and tutoring area. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

This second-story space in Dana will become an active-learning classroom, one of three on that floor. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

These hangers in the Dana Hall basement will support new overhead pipes, ducts, conduits, etc. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Formerly a lab, this expanse on Dana’s second floor will be divided between two large, light-filled classrooms. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Consigli Construction’s corporate values are reflected in signage at the gate to the Dana Chemistry Hall work site. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

The coarsely textured material is fireproofing newly sprayed onto floor structure in Dana Chemistry Hall. The existing electrical equipment has plenty of life left in it and won’t be replaced during the current (pardon the pun) renovation. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Holes where a restroom used to be in Dana Chemistry Hall. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Think of the built environments that appear in your dreams. Or of the buildings you pass by daily and don’t notice, versus the ones that are long gone but unforgettable. We aren’t philosophers (in case you hadn’t noticed), but it’s hard not to wonder at a weird similarity between solid structures and memories — both can seem so real and inhabitable, and yet are ultimately so ephemeral.

A similar topic came up the other day as we chatted with Chris Streifel, a project manager for �ֲ��ý Facility Services, about one of his top priorities, the renovation of Dana Chemistry Hall.

Prep for the renovation included a years-long inventory of the building’s contents and a plan for the disposition of all the supplies and equipment — for instance, what would go to the new Bonney Science Center versus what would go into an appropriate waste stream for no-longer-needed chemicals. (Or into Campus Construction Update’s basement for our TikTok Frankenstein tribute.)

Much of the inventory took place in Dana’s so-called attic, where stuff was stashed in storage areas amidst the air-handling machinery that dominated the fourth-floor space. Now that attic has been transformed — emptied and stripped down to bare wood, then lined with new insulation and wallboard, and now awaiting utility hookups and a new generation of HVAC equipment.

Once used in Dana Chemistry Hall, these jars and bottles for chemicals now live in a second-floor lab in the Bonney Science Center. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

“It’s just a remarkable change from two years ago,” said Streifel. “There’s a few of us who get that feeling walking through there,” a certain resonance of the old amidst the new — “having worked through all of that stuff that had been stored for decades, stuff that was stored short-term, stuff that should’ve never been stored up there, and all of the old equipment and everything else.

“Watching those things progressively vanish was interesting. To see the progress there now is really kind of a strange thing. Every now and then you see a little vestige of what used to be mixed up with a hint of what’s yet to come.”

Until the archaeologists declare otherwise, though, the reinvention of Dana will take no breaks for history or remembrance. Indeed, technicians for various subcontractors are already in the attic roughing in MEP connections — mechanical, electrical, plumbing. Soon a self-leveling cementitious compound will be applied to pave the way, so to speak, for future flooring, and the crew from Roland’s Drywall will be erecting partition walls.

And Streifel expects the installation of that new HVAC gear to begin by mid-October.

One level down, Dana’s third floor is sealed in plastic while folks from Abatement Professionals of Westbrook, Maine, remove hazardous materials. That should be done by the second week of October, and will conclude abatement work for this project.

Room 119, now with 100 percent less raked seating. The blue pipes barely visible in the trenches will carry discarded chemicals away for proper disposal. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Meanwhile, progress on the first and second floors is showing how functional, aesthetic, and pedagogical goals for the Dana makeover will play out. Demolition is at, or past, the stage of tearing down walls, and the slow pivot from destruction to construction is beginning. Streifel said that the two floors are about on a par in terms of progress, but appearances are deceptive, just because there has been more to do on the bottom floor.

A major issue is that the first floor, entered from the outside from Alumni Walk, is actually the building’s ground floor (there is also a small basement beneath that). On the upper stories, pipes that need to run below floor level, such as drainage for wastewater or used chemicals, can be hung from the ceiling of the level below. But on the first floor, those pipes must be laid in trenches cut into the concrete floor slab and the soil beneath it.

All those trenches made a dramatic impression during our visit on Sept. 27, but they’ll soon be filled in.

Another first-floor wrinkle involves Room 119. A former lecture hall, 119 previously had tiered seating, but that feature has been rendered obsolete by the advent of the hands-on, student-centered pedagogical approach called active learning, and consequently by less “sage on the stage” style lecturing. So that floor couldn’t be trenched until after it was flattened. (At least, for once, it was a floor that was leveled, and not a playing field.)

Formerly a lab, this expanse on Dana’s second floor will be divided between two large, light-filled classrooms. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

With fewer walls still standing and none of those distracting trenches running all over the place, the second floor provides a clearer sense of the improved flow and transparency that’s central to the Dana renovation. For instance, back in the day, anyone using the main entrance from the Historic Quad was greeted by walls and restrooms. This was handy if you needed a restroom or, in the case of the walls, something to bang your head against. But otherwise it gave a poor impression.

In the new Dana, when you enter that front door, what greets you will be a nice welcoming hunk of space —the new, more commodious core of Dana. To your left and right you’ll see entrances into generously fenestrated, 48-seat active learning classrooms, with a smaller one to the rear. Restrooms throughout the building, meanwhile, will be relocated off to the side, closer to the elevator. (And there will be twice as many of them, they’ll have better soundproofing than before, and they will be ADA compliant.)

On both levels, Streifel explained, once the space is cleared out and cleaned up, that same kind of flooring compound will be poured. That’s likely to happen in the next week or two. And then wall construction will start.

Overall, Streifel is pleased by Dana’s progress since July, especially “given the uncertainties of a renovation project of this magnitude. And particularly this phase of it, the demolition phase,” he said.

The Dana Chemistry construction site seen from the Alumni Walk approach to Hedge Hall. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

“There are a lot of unknowns as you start digging into walls and taking things down in a building from this era. Obviously, we have concerns from a hazardous material standpoint and that’s gone very smoothly.

“We’re almost exactly where we wanted to be from a schedule perspective. A few little hiccups here and there, but we’ve been able to roll with what we found. So, largely everything’s going really well. And I think that the team is strong and got us off to a good start.”

He added, “we’re in that blissful kind of stage where things are, A, fortunately going pretty well; and B, it’s pretty simple work right now. We only have two or three contractors heavily onsite as opposed to the 10 or 15 that’ll be there in another few months. It’ll get a little more complicated then.”

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update loves to hear from you. Please send your questions, comments, and dream narratives about current, past, and future construction at �ֲ��ý College to dhubley@bates.edu, with “Campus Construction” or “Who’s playing Igor in that TikTok?” in the subject line.

Campus Construction Update: Aug. 27, 2021

Doug Hubley — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 18:48:57 +0000

After 30 months of applying to the construction of �ֲ��ý’ Bonney Science Center countless tools, from pile drivers to 3D computer models, what came to hand for finishing the job — at least symbolically — was three pairs of really big scissors.

With a champagne toast and synchronized chops from those ceremonial shears, college President Clayton Spencer and lead donors Michael Bonney ’80 and Alison Grott Bonney ’80 snipped a garnet ribbon on Aug. 23 to declare the science center open for business.

Tour goers stop by the light-filled lounge on the second level of Bonney Science Center, which offers a commanding view of campus through windows of the Beacon. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

“Let’s raise our glasses to discovery and happiness,” proclaimed a smiling Spencer, “and to the Bonneys and all the other donors and contributors who have helped along the way.” (And it does make a certain kind of sense that you’d cut ribbon to wrap up a project.)

The ceremony capped months of intense focus on readying the building for its inaugural school year. And it took place just a week after the last of the faculty occupants moved in. They were biologists Lori Banks and Ryan Bavis — the latter a co-chair, with Vice President for Finance and Administration Geoff Swift, of the committee that steered the planning for the Bonney Center and related projects.

Weather sent the ribbon-cutting inside, to the foot of the so-called Monumental Stair. All masked up, dozens of people close to the project attended the event, which began with remarks in a classroom and then moved to a spiffy lounge, the Living Room, for refreshments and the ribbon ceremony.

“Five years ago, Alison and I had a view that a more science-literate society was something [the nation] had to have,” Mike Bonney told the gathering — a view now set in stone as the Bonney Science Center. “And you just have to look at the headlines every day to understand how society would benefit, in the U.S. and globally, with more science-literate members.”

He concluded with a shout-out to Bavis, who, he noted, led the faculty effort to design this building. “I had a minute to see him before we came into this room and he said, ‘Mike, it’s what we envisioned.’”

In a quiet moment before the ribbon-cutting ceremony at Bonney Science Center on Aug. 23, 2021, Trustee Emeritus Weston Bonney ’50 looks at a picture of the new facility projected on a classroom wall. A $50 million gift from his son and daughter-in-law, Mike ’80 and Alison Grott Bonney ’80, helped fund the building’s construction. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

President Spencer thanked folks whose contributions helped make the Bonney Center a reality — folks such as donors; �ֲ��ý’ Swift, Director of Capital Planning and Construction Pam Wichroski, Senior Project Manager Chris Streifel, and Construction Administrator Jacob Kendall; and staff at construction management firm Consigli and building design firm Payette. In its sophistication and complexity, Spencer pointed out, “this was not an easy building to build.”

Michael Hinchcliffe, a principal at Payette and lead designer of the Bonney Center, told a nice story about some tools, gathered over the years, that his father gave him as a housewarming gift.

His father told him, “This is a set of tools that you’ll need. Whenever you try to do something, use the right tool. It will help you make the work good. It will make the work easy and it will allow you to take pride in your work.”

“For me,” Hinchcliffe said, “the Bonney Science Center today is a little bit like those tools. It is a gift that the Bonneys and the other donors are giving �ֲ��ý today to solve problems, to create things that we can only dream about.”

After the ribbon-cutting ceremony on Aug. 23, 2021, Associate Professor of Biology Larissa Williams gives a tour of her new laboratory space in the Bonney Science Center to project donors David Libbey ’70 and Diane Akers Libbey ’68. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

The center, Hinchcliffe continued, “will launch the careers of countless new scientists, starting with the spark of inspiration from the amazing faculty here. It will be a place where every student at �ֲ��ý will gain an inspiration and a foundation in knowledge and facts and science.”

Earlier in the day, Campus Construction Update asked Streifel what was left to say about the Bonney project. “Bring on the students!” he replied.

But it’s also true that, over the next year or so, “there’ll be a process of identifying what I call enhancements or sometimes ‘Day Two’ items.” As in, “We need five more stools over here. We need a bookshelf over there. These tables are great, but they don’t work.”

He said, “A lot of that kind of stuff is starting to percolate onto lists, and we’ll be absorbing it.”

A science center signboard shown on Aug. 23, a few hours before a ribbon-cutting celebrated the building’s completion. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

The Bonney Science Center seen from in front of Chase Hall on Aug. 23, 2021. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

The Bonney Science Center in rendering and reality on Aug. 23, 2021. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

With fume hoods lining the walls and a large counter for students, this biology lab on the Bonney Center’s first floor is essentially ready for action. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

The glass front of a fume hood in the Bonney Center lab of Andrew Kennedy, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, is the ideal place to make notes for a lab process. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

The Beacon is prominent in this image of the Bonney Science Center from August 19, 2021. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ��ý College)

A student’s-eye view of a Bonney Science Center classroom. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

After the ribbon-cutting ceremony on Aug. 23, 2021, Associate Professor of Biology Larissa Williams gives a tour of her new laboratory space in the Bonney Science Center. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ��ý College)

Suddenly we’re hungry for pie: A look down through the Bonney Center’s Monumental Stair reveals a variety of wedge-shaped views. The bright green is a visual hallmark of building designer Payette. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

The Bonney Center’s first-floor Living Room is shown a few hours before an Aug. 23 ribbon-cutting ceremony that filled the space with stakeholders in the years-long Bonney construction project. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

The chemistry instrumentation room in the Bonney Science Center. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Looking toward Nichols Street down a third-floor Bonney Center hallway. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

It wouldn’t be a Campus Construction Update without at least one image of workers in manlifts. In this July 22 photo, roofers are working on trim at the edge of the Bonney Center’s lid. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

And here’s where it all began: the future Bonney Center site, seen from a point in front of Chase Hall, in early March 2019 — just prior to the start of construction. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Demolition derby: Meanwhile, if Streifel is still busy with Bonney, what’s brighter on his radar screen these days is the repurposing of Dana Chemistry Hall. Interior demolition began there in July — at which time, moreover, a construction zone was established that blocks foot traffic between Dana and Hedge, and along the service road behind Ladd Library. (Don’t say we didn’t warn you!)

As we’ve written before, the Bonney Center resulted from a strategic process, begun in 2016, in which �ֲ��ý engaged Payette to help reconfigure campus science facilities to better meet evolving needs. The rebuilding of Dana is a second result of that process. (And a third will be a variety of upgrades to Carnegie Science Hall. The three projects together are budgeted at some $75 million.)

Seen from Alumni Walk, Dana Chem is partially veiled by a green site fence. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Overall, Payette’s goals with the Dana overhaul are, first, simply to make it a friendlier building; and second, to transform it into a teaching center with an emphasis on introductory science. The first floor will be dedicated to intro chemistry, and the third will house biology labs and a general-purpose teaching lab. The second floor, Streifel explained, “becomes three beautiful, large, general-purpose classrooms.”

“One reason that Dana was a good candidate for this renovation is that [classroom locations are] not chopped up by structural elements” such as load-bearing columns. “So classrooms can be sizable. And there are good windows all around the perimeter, so they’ll be well-lit,” he continued. “And it’s right in the corner of the Historic Quad, with all the students coming through, right where we want classrooms.”

The Dana Chemistry work site seen from the service road between Ladd Library and Hedge Hall on Aug. 23, 2021. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

Structurally, the project entails the removal of some central interior masonry walls and other partitions to improve sight lines and traffic flow. As Streifel explained, “The core right now is a maze of small spaces.”

So while two load-bearing masonry walls and some other features will stay put, “almost everything else is removed. And that’s a lot of masonry and old partitions. The goal is to free up that core for a more transparent building,” in keeping with the openness imparted by glass and open space inside Bonney.

Payette’s aesthetic touch will be evident in other ways, too, in the new Dana. “You’ll see a lot of the same design themes and materials, and a lot of the equipment will be the same,” said Streifel.

Formerly used for storage and for HVAC and other building-systems machinery, the attic of Dana Chemistry Hall is ready for renovation and the installation of new technology in this Aug. 23 image. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

As of this week, what was destined for removal has been removed from Dana’s basement and the attic, more or less. That’s especially true for the attic, which for decades was filled with air-handling machinery and storage spaces but at the moment resembles, as much as anything, the inside of a barn — a lot of bare boards.

“Just a few months ago, faculty were still working in that building, and now it’s barely recognizable,” said Streifel. “When I go in the attic, I’m blown away by it — ‘This is the same building?’”

Happening next is the placement of new insulation and wallboards over the old naked wood of the roof and walls, and then, in time, the installation of new HVAC machinery.

The basement, meanwhile, is where building-wide electrical infrastructure will live. But first, floor drains need to be installed and that’s going on now: Neat trenches have been cut into the concrete floors into which the drain fittings and the pipes will be set.

A new trench for floor drain infrastructure in the basement of Dana Chemistry. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)

And what of levels One through Three? Demolition continues, followed by hazardous-material abatement. Demolition in progress looks like hell — ceiling tiles on the floor, wall fixtures and furnishings yanked out of place, ripped-out cables and other debris strewn around — but actually performing the work must be a cathartic kind of fun, at least for the first 30 minutes.

Lakeside Concrete Cutting and Abatement of Newport, Maine, “is doing all of the demo and abatement, which is a pretty sizable package,” said Streifel. “They’ve got another a month and a half roughly of demo and abatement before the building is truly done with that and we’re fully engaged in the rebuilding process.”

This halyard ground: Knocked noticeably out of plumb by a falling tree years ago, the old flagpole in front of Hathorn was replaced in July.

�ֲ��ý’ longtime flag supplier, locally owned TriState Flag, provided and installed the new pole. Strong and lightweight, at least compared with the old metal pole, the new pole is a fiberglass “Zeus” model made by PLP Composites in Fitzwilliam, N.H. Like the pole it replaced, the Zeus is about 60 feet high.

As we’ve previously noted, sand is a sort of Swiss Army Knife of construction materials (another metaphor that never should have left the factory!), and it plays a crucial role in the world of flagpole installation. A pole is set into the ground within a cylinder that’s just a little wider (do they call it a pole vault?), and the gap is filled with sand.

While some workers ensure that the pole is kept plumb, others thump the pole with a rubber mallet to compact the sand with the vibrations. To finish, the circumference of the pole at ground level is tightly sealed against moisture.

Later, if you need to remove the pole, you can just vacuum out the sand.

Another familiar firm, Carrier Landscaping, tended to new land- and hardscaping around the pole. “We also had support from the grounds crew, electricians, carpenters, and others in Facility Services, so the project has been a real team effort,” said Jay Phillips, director of facility services operations.

The original flagpole was presented by the College Club and the Alumni Fund in June 1931, accompanied by a plaque inscribed “One Flag, One Land, One Heart, One Hand, Our Nation Evermore.” Ninety years later, the Class of 1967 has made the funding for the flag pole part of its 55th Reunion giving effort.

A group of first-year students passes the new �ֲ��ý flagpole on Aug. 27, 2021, en route to Commons for their first �ֲ��ý breakfast. The flag will be raised for the first time during a forthcoming ceremony. (Jay Burns/�ֲ��ý College)

Summer projects redux: Finally, updates on summer projects that we told you about last time, or should have:

Two updates to Hathorn Hall are more or less complete. Inside, new chalkboards have been installed in a few classrooms, a process that exposed older blackboards that still bore faculty scribblings from who knows when. That work also entailed the replacement of ceiling tile and refinishing of walls and trim.

Correction to the correction: Confusion arose when this signature was revealed during the removal of old Hathorn Hall blackboards for replacement during the summer. We thought the scrawl read, “Thank you,” with a date of “May 16–1892.” Nope! Student sleuths suggested that the scrawler actually wrote “Fran K.” or a tribute to Frank K. Sweetser, parent of a student in the Class of 1912. Good detective work — but the real story was something else altogether. As Editorial Director Jay Burns discovered, the graffito actually involved the �ֲ��ý equivalent of the World War II “Kilroy was here” meme. Read all about it. (Paul Farnsworth photo/�ֲ��ý College)

On Hathorn’s roof, new slate, copper, and rubber coverings are in place. “The existing roof decking is in amazing condition after many years under the old slate,” noted project manager Bob Leavitt.

In the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, Deblois Electric has replaced all the old incandescent lighting fixtures above the audience seats with energy-efficient LED units. An early concern was the potential high cost of erecting conventional scaffolding to elevate the electricians to ceiling level, but project manager Paul Farnsworth found a reasonably priced provider of structures specifically for lamp replacement projects in awkward spaces like churches and auditoriums: LightbulbScaffold.com of Shreveport, La.

New slate roofing and copper flashing atop Hathorn Hall. (Robert Leavitt/�ֲ��ý College)

Over at the campus heating plant, the conversion of Boiler No. 3 to burn carbon-neutral LR-100 vegetable oil has been briefly paused due to delayed delivery of the inline fuel heater. That should arrive by the end of September, and testing is slated for early October.

Finally, project manager Shelby Burgau reports that the installation of new MODAL flooring and new batting cages in the Gray Athletic Building is complete. “There were no surprises and everything looks great.”

Can we talk? Campus Construction Update welcomes queries and comments about current, past, future, timeless, and “that never happened — or did it?” construction at �ֲ��ý. Write to dhubley@bates.edu, putting “Campus Construction” in the subject line. And Fran K. for reading this month’s CCU!

And we mean it: Don’t use the fountain! Seen in Dana Chemistry Hall during demolition. (Doug Hubley/�ֲ��ý College)