Construction Blog

The Last Post

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:42:41 PST

I’ve been meaning to write a final post of this construction blog for months, but without the incentive of almost daily change I simply haven’t gotten around to it.

Today is the third day of Winter term, 2009, and the Harrington Learning Commons, Sobrato Technology Center, and Orradre Library has been open for nine months. We believe it’s been a huge success! There’s energy in the building all the time its open (OK, less so at 7:30 am than at 4:00 pm or 9:00 pm). More than 600,000 people have come through the library security gate in two academic terms and a summer session. The collaborative rooms are heavily booked from about the third week of each term through finals (I’ve included a screen capture of the room reservations from the final exam period of Spring 2008). We’ve hosted a number of special events in the Saint Clare Room, the viewing and taping rooms and, indeed, the whole facility (election night, 2008). Faculty have used the space for creative programming, such as the Friday evening film series, and they’re even holding office hours here. And the building earned a 2008 Spotlight Award from ProAV Magazine for the “Best Educational AV Design.”

At the same time, there are a number of things we’re working on. We’re in the middle of a project to improve temperature and humidity set points and fluctuation in the Archives and Special Collection vault. We’ve just signed a contract for additional display cases for the Exhibit Area, and are looking forward to mounting our first exhibit once they arrive. We’re still working on balancing the HVAC system, and dealing with building pressure issues to make sure the exterior doors close when they should. And there’s been a learning curve with operational issues, like staffing of the Information Commons desk, how to make use of the flexibility designed into the Training and Instruction rooms, exploiting the capabilities of the digital signage system in communicating to clients, and how to effectively support the many groups that use our facilities for special events.

We’ll be working on some of these issues for awhile (I don’t think we’ll ever be able to say the building is “finished”). We’ll be posting some photos of the building, and will try to keep documenting significant happenings here on the building web site (http://www.scu.edu/lctcl/).

But it’s been a wonderful experience helping create a fantastic resource for the university. Thanks for sharing the journey with us.

Ron

Weeks of June 16, 23 and 30 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 04:44:09 PST

Longer times between reports. I was traveling the week of June 23, and didn’t have time to get an earlier report out before I left.

The really big news is that we’ve experienced some water intrusion through conduits on the south side of the building the lower level, both in the public spaces and in the Archives and Special Collections vault. These are NOT the kind of water intrusions through the floor and walls that we experienced in the old Orradre building. Rather, they come from poorly sealed data and electrical conduits that serve as paths through the foundation for water from outside the building.

The leak in the public spaces came in through a data conduit, as a result of water accumulating in a wiring vault out in the grassy area to the south of the building, we think because of a broken sprinkler pipe. Once the water was pumped out of the vault the leak stopped. So, in addition to sealing the conduits more thoroughly, we’ll need to come up with some way to monitor the water level in that vault and empty it. The leak in the Archives vault area was through electrical conduits. Those have all been resealed, but the contractor is still searching for the source of the leak (a little digging near the foundation on the south of the building, some more a little further out).

Also outside, the landscaping contractor gave up on the sick palm tree coming back to life. I came in Wednesday morning and there were several workmen clearing out a hole where that palm had been planted, and it had already been moved to a trailer parked at the bend where The Alameda becomes Market Street. There was a replacement Palm waiting out there (notice in the third photo the severed top of the old palm which they had to saw off to get it to fit on the trailer). The new palm was planted and looking good long before noon.

We also got what should be the last of the furniture, a number of stools that go with the cocktail height tables that are near some of the windows on the second and third floors, and near the drop-in computer lab on the second. The manufacturer stopped all production about six weeks before the furniture was to be delivered in March and we’ve been waiting ever since. The tables haven’t gone unused, however. I’ve seen more than one person move the tables next to the windows and sit on the wide window sills, which put the table at just the right height for using a laptop.

Weeks of June 2 and 9, 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:48:16 PST

This is a two-week report, still concentrating on the interior of the building. Spring quarter finals started June 9 so the building has been really busy. We are open 24 hours during exams, so we opened at 9:00 am Sunday morning and didn’t close again until 2:00 am Friday. We staff these extended hours with volunteers and students, so I spent Tuesday night from 11:00 pm Tuesday to 7:00 am Wednesday in the building as the adult of record, just in case anything went wrong. I took these photos that evening.

The first picture is of a pair of students who had created a little nest on the third floor. Each of them had a blanket to keep them warm, they’d rearranged one of the sofas so each of them had a backrest, and they’d brought a couple throw pillows in from one of the terraces to provide a little more cushion. I had seen the young woman (actually, I recognized her blanket!) Monday morning when I came in to work. She was curled up sleeping in the booth on the second floor near our administrative offices. I thought briefly about waking her (the first exam was starting in about an hour) but decided not to.

The second photo is of a corner on the first floor in the New Book Nook. These five students had moved a few pieces of furniture to create a dense study area and were there all night, working steadily away. This picture was taken from the landing on the stairs to the second floor.

The third picture was taken about 3:00 am in one of the group study rooms on the Lower level. There had been a group of about eight women in that room the first time I took a count at 11:00 pm, and they looked then like they’d been in place for quite awhile. I finally asked them if I could take their picture after the group had dwindled somewhat, but it shows how the students are using the rooms. They all had their laptops out and working, they were using the whiteboard walls to work out problems, and they were really working hard.

The last photo is a real example of how students move furniture around to create an environment that’s right for them. The bench seating runs around the base of the stair down to the Living Room. I had expected that to be a very popular, casual seating area, but it’s not very heavily used. But this night several students had moved tablet arm chairs under the stairs, along with a couple ottomen. When I first came by there were four or five students seated in this space, but by the time I got back with the camera they were gone, and only their preferred seating pattern stayed behind.

We take a head count every hour when we’re open during exams. The night I worked there were more than 250 students here working at 2:00 am, our normal closing time. Even at the lowest point of the night (at 6:00 am) there were 100 students in the building, and some were coming in for some last-minute study before the 9:00 am exam started.

Week of May 26 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 05:41:09 PST

Inside we’ve got some more art installed. There was a bust of Saint Thomas More in the Orradre building that had been donated to the university, with a requirement that it always be displayed in the library. We found the perfect place in the new building, at the foot of the east public stair, where you can get a great view of it from the lower level, but also see it from all levels in the stairwell, as the second photo shows.

We’re getting toward the end of the term and the building is starting to buzz. I took a shot of the upper level Information Commons on Sunday afternoon June 1. There was (and there almost always is) a lot of activity. I’m particularly pleased by the way students will gather around a single system to work together on a project, like the pair in the foreground are doing. We tried to create work space that would allow this to happen and I’ve seen as many as five people around one computer in this space. Notice the guy has pulled a tablet arm chair up to the workstation to provide more comfortable seating.

We also finally have the hanging signs up for the IC service point and the circulation desk, as you can see in the last picture.

Week of May 19 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 06:03:18 PST

Outside the landscapers have removed the last fronds from the palm that I mentioned a few weeks ago didn’t look healthy. I’m told they say with the fronds off the palm can rest and will come back strong. I’m skeptical.

Inside we moved Fr. Sullivan’s mural of the history of the Valley from its temporary location in Loyola Hall onto the space that was specifically designed for it in the multifunction area outside the Saint Clare Room. It really looks quite nice there. I’m happy we chose that instead of some of the other locations in the building we had considered. There are a few other art pieces that we need to decide locations for, but I think that’s something that will wait for summer. I know the President wants to be involved in those decisions.

The architects had a professional photographer here taking images of the building all this week. There was a team of three and they got some really great shots. The photographer had an interesting camera that I have to ask him more about when he comes back, probably after graduation.

We’ve also been doing quite a few tours for groups from other universities. Mostly local places (Stanford a couple times this week, UC Santa Cruz a couple weeks ago, San Jose State in a couple weeks) but this week we hosted a group from the National University of Singapore! They have a wonderful opportunity due to acquiring a significant amount of land, and they’re really interested in creating innovative learning spaces.

Week of May 12 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 02:41:03 PST

Only one interior photo to show this week. The first major event in the Saint Clare Room was a presentation in late April by the mayor of San Jose about his environmental initiatives for the city, which was a set-up theatre style for about 100 people that went off very well and didn’t crowd the room at all. This week we had our second major event, a donor reception for the Center for Science, Technology and Society. This was the first time we’d used the “prefunction” area, which was set up for a reception, followed by a presentation in the Saint Clare Room itself. So I took a picture of the reception area, but I couldn’t talk them into a glass of wine.

I’m told this event had been scheduled for a major donor’s private home, but after a tour of the building he suggested using the Saint Clare Room instead.

Monitoring the group study room usage is going OK. The first few times through we deleted LOTS of reservations, but students seemed to learn to follow the new guidelines fairly quickly and now we don’t have to delete many reservations at all. It may have helped that Law School exams were finishing, and Law students had created much of the demand for those spaces.

Week of May 5 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 30 May 2008 02:35:15 PST

Nothing new to report on the building exterior.

Inside they’re still delivering a few pieces of furniture. The desk and credenza for the service point in the Living Room, intended primarily to help people who were using the microform collections but also to provide first level technical support for people in the lower level information commons, finally got delivered. I don’t know what took so long, since it was a floor sample. We’re still waiting for the stools for the café tables on the second and third floor. Steelcase postponed construction for that model and we don’t have a delivery date yet.

They also got the ceiling and lights in the room that looks out into the ARS. That was the room that had been hidden for nearly three years since the ARS was finished and, when we opened it up, discovered the lighting that was on the plans had never been built. It’s been open to the public but really dark. Now you can actually see in the room.

We’ve been kicking around what to do about the group study room reservation situation for awhile. Friday I sent a message to all students outlining some new guidelines for reservations: four hour maximum time, reservations must have a student name and matching SCU email address associated with them, no consecutive reservations for the same room by the same person, no reservation of two rooms at the same time by one person. I also mentioned that anyone we could identify as having deleted someone else’s reservation would be banned from reserving a study room for one term. I got a few messages back thanking us for doing this, and one from someone who said these were great rules but it was unfair to punish someone who had deleted another person’s reservation since “that hadn’t specifically been prohibited” and besides, there had “developed a consensus on campus that anyone who wasn’t smart enough to password protect their reservation deserved to lose it.” I guess competence, conscience and compassion doesn’t actually get ingrained in every one of our students.

We’re enforcing the new rules manually since we can’t do it through the room wizards. We’ll see how it goes.

Week of April 28 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Mon, 12 May 2008 04:38:51 PST

This week I actually have a couple exterior things to write about. One of the four palm trees that were planted in the lawn south of the building looks a little sickly. The fronds are mostly brown, instead of bright green, and I worry about its longevity. I understand palms are relatively delicate and don’t like to be replanted. We moved four palms out of the construction site area more than 18 months ago and they are all flourishing, and the other three that we newly planted look great, so I’m hoping this one comes back.

We’ve also had the university’s “bird man” around the building this week. He’s the guy who helps us keep the pigeons from making a mess. They’ve been stringing the wire that you see in the third photo around the building. This is on the edge of one of the public terraces on the third floor. I think the two wires carry a low electrical voltage, so the pigeons get a slight shock if they contact both of them, but I should really find out how they work rather than spreading bad information.

The third photo I took in the lower level. This is one of the laptop chairs that’s been pushed into the stack area (it actually is kind of hiding behind a pillar) and someone has taken a second tablet arm and attached on the other arm of the chair, to create more horizontal surface. We’ve seen lots of changes in furniture location and combinations, but I hadn’t seen this before.

The big uproar this week is about the group study rooms. We made the Room Wizard reservation systems available online last week, and now many of the group rooms are reserved for single 12 – 15 hour blocks, many by Law students studying for finals. This, of course, means lots of students aren’t able to get into a room. The Wizards don’t allow us to limit the length of the reservation. I had asked students to be considerate of others and limit the length of their reservations, but it seems appealing to common sense and courtesy isn’t working. We’ve even had some reports of reservations that weren’t password protected being deleted, and the room being reserved by others. We’re still talking about the best way to deal with this.

The fourth photo is one of my favorite spots in the building. You can see all four floors from this spot, although the picture only shows three. Anyone know where this is?

Week of April 21 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 01 May 2008 06:38:12 PST

I think I’m going to stop posting the exterior shots unless something substantive has changed (which is probably unlikely at this point). You can notice in the southwest corner shot that the Engineering School has made the grass areas to the south and west of the Learning Commons part of the “field work” for their surveying courses.

Inside the changes that have occurred are usually relatively minor and hard to see. We continue to work on the punch list items, AV integration is moving closer to completion (my guess now is around May 9), and the building is still buzzing. I’ve posted a photo of the Information Commons service point mid-afternoon, which used to be a really slow time in the Orradre building but is relatively busy here.

I was invited to a Student Senate meeting Thursday evening. I think it’s really great that the students care enough about the building to want to quiz me a bit. Most of their questions were about things that should have been in place at opening but weren’t (we need more trash and recycling bins [distributed Tuesday] and trash cans in the collaborative rooms [first batch distributed Thursday], when are there going to be bike racks [temporary racks up now, first permanent rack up in about two weeks], noise levels [particularly through the doors of the collaborative rooms], elevator chime noise [need different chime set], automatic light shutoff on the terraces [they’re going off at 10:00 pm leaving everyone in the dark – working on proper programming]). They also asked if we could ban Law students from the building! This seems to be motivated by the fact that non-Law students can’t use the Law Library, but we’ve always welcomed Law students because we’re the university library, so the answer is no.

One interesting event that I hope isn't typical is that our network manager accidentally got a copy of an invitation from one of our Room Wizard scheduling devices to an "Amazing rock your socks off library party. Yeah." in one of our collaborative rooms. Not exactly the kind of use we envisioned when we designed the building.

This is the end of the fourth week of spring term and mid-term exams are coming up. It will be interesting to see whether use of the building increases.

Week of April 14 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 06:45:04 PST

No really visible changes outside except that they’ve placed the last sod in the area just east of the ARS, as the fourth picture shows, so our landscaping should be complete.

Inside, the big news is we’ve started to pull the materials that are going to be on the open shelves out of the ARS. The fifth photo shows the area right next to the stairs to the Living Room, which now actually looks like it’s part of a library! We’ll be working on filling the rest of the shelves through most of the summer.

There aren’t a lot of visible changes elsewhere on the interior, but the students continue to make themselves at home. I took a picture of one student napping on the sofas in the Living Room, while two others studied around her. We’re also finally putting out some of the things that should have been there when the building opened, like trash and recycling containers through the public areas. We’ll probably be working on those kinds of things for another couple weeks.

Week of April 7 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:12:02 PST

Almost all of the exterior construction is finished. The last bit of exterior landscaping is being installed east of the ARS, as you can see in the fourth photo.

Inside, we’re still dealing with all kinds of issues, even though the building has been in use for almost two weeks. Power and data connections for some of the tables and carrels aren’t finalized yet, and some of the lighting for the carrels hasn’t arrived so those aren’t installed everywhere. The audio-visual equipment installation probably won’t be finished until the end of this month, or perhaps even later. Most of the AV installations are pretty complex (interestingly enough, so people will find the equipment easy to use) and programming the control systems is taking a long time. However, students seem to be able to use the simpler technologies (like the displays) in the collaborative rooms without any troubles. I even walked into the video conference room on the second floor to find a student playing with the cameras in the front and back of the room (he had them aimed at each other producing a sort of infinitely recursive image).

The biggest annoyance has been door locks and door alarms. The locking plan for the building is also complex since we need to provide a variety of levels of control to access different spaces, mostly in the staff areas of the building. So some locks still aren’t programmed and some staff who should be able to get into particular areas can’t.

The door alarms associated with entry to the staff stairwells are also a real problem. The intention is to allow staff to use the two stairwells on the north side of the building and the one at the southeast corner to quickly get between floors and to avoid clogging the two public stairwells. So all staff are supposed to be able to override the emergency exit alarms with their ID cards. That seems to work, but not everyone remembers to swipe their card (the doors weren’t labeled so we have home-made signs up) which set off the alarm. And some of the doors seem not to close tightly which, coupled with what seems to be very tight tolerances on the door sensors, makes the door think its been propped open and sets off the alarm.

Just normal teething problems, but they are still annoying for both staff and the people using the building. Another example, we didn’t get trash or recycling containers in the building until late this week.

Building use seems just fine. There are lots of people in the building and they seem to have made themselves right at home. We’ve had a few complaints about noise, although everything seems fairly quiet when I’ve been in most parts of the building. Maybe I need to start coming in at midnight.

The last photo shows the soccer bleachers that are now on the former interim library site. I'm amazed at how quickly all traces of that building have been wiped from campus.

Week of March 31 2008 - A Learning Resort

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 07:19:07 PST

We’re open to the public!

This has been a LONG time coming. I’m not posting the standard exterior views this week, nothing is different (there are a few changes, some final landscaping and closing the door that was put on the east side of the ARS so we could use it during construction) but nothing major.

But the opening! The building was dressed up with a balloon arch in front of the main entrance with a lot of people gathered in front, and Bucky Bronco and the Pep Band provided some excitement. Provost Lucia Gilbert acted as mistress of ceremonies and gave a short presentation, Fr. Locatelli (introduced to chants of “Papa Loc, Papa Loc”) talked briefly and repeated the dedication prayer from the March 14^th dedication, and Congressman Mike Honda (who helped secure Congressionally Directed grants for the facility) also talked. There was a ribbon-cutting ceremony, the doors opened, and everyone streamed inside.

The IS staff who were in the building at the opening said it looked like a tidal wave of people coming down the hall. The next set of photos are some I took of people early in the afternoon as they were roaming around the building. The organizing committee arranged for SCU music students to provide some background sound from the living room (I talked to the keyboard player later in the day who promised to play all the time if I’d just put a grand piano down in there). Mostly people walked around and tried to discover all the building’s features, but there were a few people who came in and started serious studying. Close to 5:00 I walked around and looked at what people had written on the walltalkers walls in the collaborative rooms, and took a photo of one appreciative comment among many.

I was away from campus Tuesday and Wednesday, and when I came back Thursday it was clear the students had taken to heart the idea of rearranging furniture to suit their needs at the moment. For example, every piece of furniture in the living room except the heavy sofas had been moved. I also found that the Saint Clare statue was now installed in her room.

The quote at the beginning of this was something I overheard on one of the third floor terraces. A student was sitting there, looking out over the campus and talking to a few friends: “This is a Learning Resort!” We might have to make that our alternative name.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this possible: our donors, the architects, consultants and construction people, and most of all to the wonderful IS staff who’ve worked for more than a dozen years to make this building a reality!

Week of March 24 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 06:30:24 PST

These photos were taken on Sunday March 30, the day before the building opening. No noticeable changes on the exterior of the building.

On the interior the big news was the arrival starting Tuesday of the last major furnishings components, the more traditional library tables and carrels. There was an onsite team that really worked hard to get the shipment (several semi trailers worth of stuff) unloaded and set up. All the furniture was shipped “knocked down” (think of setting up something from Ikea multiplied by 100 with much heavier components). By Friday everything was set up except the big four-person tables, and they were missing essential components. Those finally arrived Friday afternoon and the installation team worked really late to get those set up for the opening. They worked too late to do much cleanup, so I spent part of Sunday morning vacuuming sawdust off the floor on the lower level.

Other small shipments of furniture also came in over the week, like the photo of the “beanbag-like” chairs. I had been pushing for real bean bags but then was told they were referred to as “love sacks” (literally, that’s the name) and decided that probably wouldn’t fit in the library. These are more structured but provide some of the same feel.

The crew from Bon Appetit was in setting up the café. It’s named Sunstream because that was the name of the house construction company in San Francisco whose success led to the creation of the Gellert Foundation, who donated money to the building for the naming rights and graciously agreed to that name.

The last weekend was a real push by IT staff to get the computers into the information commons and the training and instruction rooms. People worked all day and well into the night Friday (they had just broken for pizza when I was leaving about 7:30) on setting up the Dells and Macs in the information commons and were back at it when I came in on Saturday. Installing the Macs in the training and instruction rooms took two 10 – 12 hour days on Saturday and Sunday. A lot of work but they’re a big part of what we promised the campus and we wanted them to at least be functional for the opening.

I’ve included a photo of the site where the interim library stood. In less than a week that building was dismantled, the trailers hauled away, and the site ready to install bleachers for the Earthquake games.

Also on Sunday we took more than 50 librarians and IT management people from other AJCU universities through the building (that’s why I was vacuuming). They were at USF for their annual meeting and we jumped at the chance to show them our new space. Everyone loved the building, which we took as a good omen for Monday.

Week of March 17 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 03:55:54 PST

Moving week for Information Services! We moved all the Archives and Special Collections that were in the interim library late the previous week, and this week was IS staff and all the remaining materials that were in the interim library, like current periodicals. This was also exam week, so the interim library stuff moved last so we minimized impact on students studying.

You can see one of the moving trucks in the first photo but, again, not much exterior change is visible. One thing that has changed is that the trees that were planted in the area south of the building are starting to bud out. They had looked absolutely dormant since they’d been planted while all the other deciduous trees were full of leaves and I’d worried that they might not have made it through the planting. But the fourth photo shows they’re starting to show green.

Inside, a lot more of the furniture is now in place, and more of the AV technology is being installed, although it will probably be mid to late April before we’re done with that. The multimedia lab is now starting to look like what we’d envisioned, a group-oriented classroom in the round. The patio furniture is up on the third floor public terraces, although one is missing the cushions. And they’re starting to create the pedestal for the woodcarving of Saint Clare in her room.

But the move was the big thing. Staff moves, from Leavey Events Center, the IT building and the “IT annex” in the former Bank of America building on Lafayette, and Ricard and Varsi for Media Services, kept everyone busy for the first part of the week. The movers were very efficient, and most of us had managed to pack up our offices before Monday morning (I started packing Sunday the 16^th, finished the morning of Monday the 17^th, and got moved that day). But because of the compressed move time much of our infrastructure wasn’t ready. I got a phone on my desk Monday but didn’t have dial tone for a couple days (blessed relief!) and only had wireless networking for a couple days. Some IS staff were without services for longer (something about taking care of the boss :-). No one’s fault, just too much to do in a very short period of time.

The next four pictures are of the move out of the interim library. We started early Friday morning with the expectation it would take all weekend. But the movers were really quick, worked nearly 12 straight hours (without taking lunch, I think) and got everything into the new building in one day, although not everything in its final location. As we were moving out furniture, books and computers, there were crews stripping out the data cabling we installed when the interim was built. At one time data cabling was simply “abandoned in place” but the price of copper is now so high that it’s cost effective (not to mention ecologically responsible) to recycle everything. By then end of Friday workers were already separating the trailers and preparing them to be hauled away. There was real pressure to get the site cleaned up because bleachers need to be installed where the trailers were for Earthquakes home games.

The final picture is the banner that was hung from the terrace outside the Saint Clare Room announcing the grand opening at noon on March 31!

Week of March 10 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:32:39 PST

This was a really exciting week for the building. There was a dedication ceremony Friday afternoon, with more than 600 people in attendance and brief talks by the major donors whose names are on the building.

But first the mundane things.

Outside there’s no noticeable change, although there is one change of something that had been bugging me. Through some oversight, two glass panels on the southeast corner, up near the roof, were installed with clear glass instead of frosted glass. That meant when you looked up you saw the steel beam that was in that corner and the roof drainpipe that ran down next to it. That’s now been fixed!

Early in the week the statue was installed on the pedestal under the tower. This statue was created by an SCU student, Kim Munson, as an entry in a campus art contest last year. The President liked it so much he insisted we find a place for it in the Learning Commons, and then found a donor to cover the cost. Kim’s original sculpture was made of wood and was about 18” high. A foundry in Monterey laser-scanned the original to create a 3-D computer model, then blew up the model to about six feet high and cast it in bronze.

A lot of the furniture is moving in, although we’re two weeks away from getting the more traditional library tables and chairs. I’ve included a photo of the furniture setup in part of the living room, a different style of furniture at the top of the west stairs to the second floor, and the tables in the archives and special collections reading room. Those tables were originally in the Varsi library, then were moved to Orradre, and now are in the new library. We had them refinished (and had to go with a darker finish than we originally wanted to cover repairs of some of the graffiti they found when they stripped the tables down) and they look so good we’re now thinking about getting more of these redone, if we can find the right place in the building.

But the big event of the week was the dedication ceremony Friday afternoon. The construction team scrambled to get the donor recognition signage up at the entryway, and development, media services, IT and an outside consultant worked feverishly to put some video and images up on the two LCD displays that flank the donor recognition. We finished that Friday morning (just-in-time recognition!). Fr. Locatelli spoke briefly, then Mike Orradre spoke on behalf of the Orradre Family, John A. Sobrato spoke on behalf of the Sobrato Family, and finally Lorry Lokey spoke. Lorry is the major donor to the project, and what he had chosen to name the Learning Commons portion of the building was a big secret – I’m told that, up until a few days before the event only three people knew what that name would be. Lorry surprised everyone, and especially his long-time companion Joanne Harrington, by naming the building after her. Much applause, happiness all around, and our new building finally has its name: the Harrington Learning Commons, Sobrato Technology Center, and Orradre Library.

Week of March 3 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 11:14:29 PST

These photos were taken Sunday the 9^th. I can’t see any change from last week on the exterior shots. If you can, please let me know via comments.

We keep making progress on the interior, though. The fourth photo shows the compact shelving that’s now installed and operational in the archives and special collections vault area on the lower level. That shelving is electric powered, since there will be a lot of movement going on, with many ranks of shelving to be moved at any one time to get access to the desired materials. Outside in the public areas the compact shelving that will hold government documents and reference materials is manual (actually, the vendor calls it “mechanically assisted”) because it’s more intuitive to use and there are only a few sections to move to open an aisle. Also on the lower level, the wooden end caps for the book shelves are on-site and leaning up against the stacks, ready to be installed.

On the upper floors, the café area is almost complete. The built-in equipment is installed. They need to bring in a chilled display rack for bottled drink and things like sandwiches, and they need to install the menu board. The furniture is in place in all the conference rooms. The one in the eighth photo is on the third floor in the staff area where the administrative systems people are located, and will be reserved for use by Information Services staff. Finally, I put in a picture of the finished paneling in the Saint Clare Room, which is really rich-looking in person. They’re fabricating a stand for the statue, but I don’t know when that will be installed and the statue will move from St. Joseph’s.

We start moving into the building Monday the 11^th, pulling all the archives and special collections materials that are in the interim library and putting them into the compact shelving in the vault!

Week of February 25 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 05:29:08 PST

This week’s big outside change also involves landscaping. They untied the fronds of the four palm trees that were planted in the lawn area to the south of the building. You can see this in the second photo.

Inside, the cushions and tables are now in place on the bench that keeps people from walking under the stairs on the lower level, as the fourth picture shows. On the third floor, the sliding walls in the open collaborative space have been installed. This space is open above and all the furniture can be easily reconfigured, but sometimes it may be necessary to separate one group from another and these walls can be pulled out to divide all or part of the open space. Also on the third floor, the cabinet makers have started installing the wood surrounds on the exterior door to the Saint Clare Room, from the terrace. This photo doesn’t do justice to the richness and luster of the wood.

I had an interesting experience when I was in the building taking these pictures on Sunday. I was walking around in the data center and could hear faint voices. I was pretty certain I was alone in the building, much less in the data center, so I couldn’t figure out where the voices were coming from. But I finally found a television playing over in the area where our new cable TV system is being installed. This upgrade to the cable TV is really needed. We purchased Scientific Atlanta gear, which is really good quality, and they’ve had an installation team on-site for about a week. I took pictures of both the front of the racks (with the TV) and the back. That’s a really clean cabling job, with everything bundled and tie-wrapped (now I know why the installation charge was high :-). I wish I could say that we’d done as well when we moved the servers into the data center, but we were a little too rushed, so I won’t be taking pictures of the back of those racks.

Week of February 18 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:16:44 PST

I’m running a couple weeks behind on the blog. There are days when it seems like the last month of getting the building ready to open takes more work than the preceding 18. I’ll try to catch up this weekend.

These pictures were taken Saturday February 23. The big news on the outside of the building is that the grass is in almost everywhere. I’m sure they’ll finish early next week. You can see the area left to complete in the second picture. The second picture also gives a ground-level view of the grass next to the building, and the fourth picture is a view looking down from one of the third floor terraces.

Inside everyone is working at a breakneck pace but most of the changes are really incremental. An example of that is in the data center, where we’ve now put doors on most of the racks, as you can see in the fifth photo. It’s really kind of cool to see all the equipment glowing behind the black mesh covers of the doors (mesh so airflow isn’t impeded). Looking at it reminds me of the VU meters bouncing behind the smoked Plexiglas cover of the Teac 4010S reel-to-reel deck I had in the early ‘70s. (Hey, don’t laugh! A party, dim lights, a little wine, Cream on the deck and those meters peaking – it was magic.)

One area where progress is not incremental is the Archives and Special Collections vault area on the lower level, where the compact shelving is about half erected, but none of the electrical connections are in yet for the motors that will drive the shelves.

Another area is the Archives and Special Collections Reading Room and Exhibit Area on the third floor. I think this is the space that’s farthest from completion and it’s seemed that nothing was going on there. They’ve now started the woodwork around the entrance and the exhibit cases that are built into the wall, as the last photo shows. The wall will be plate glass, and the exhibit cases should look almost like they’re floating. Not a lot of progress on the Reading Room portion yet.

Week of February 11 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 06:16:36 PST

These pictures were taken Saturday February 16.

I sound like a broken record (for those of you of a certain age, records were round flat devices made of plastic intended to play back music – they sometimes cracked and caused the sound to loop continuously on playback :-) – not much change on the exterior shots. In the third photo you can see that the circular area in the foreground now has sod in place over the turf block. There’s also a JLG machine being used for exterior painting parked by the parking structure.

Inside, things seem to be moving at a breakneck pace. The fourth photo gives a little better view of the furniture on the lower level Information Commons, with some of the collaborative study rooms behind. The furnishing contractor is starting to connect the built-in wiring in the computer workstations to the floor boxes, which is requiring some repositioning of the floor boxes (pull up the carpet tiles, rearrange the floor tiles until the boxes are in the right location, reinstall the carpet tiles). The next shot is a close-up of one of the Room Wizards that we’re going to use for scheduling the conference rooms. Some of them are mounted on the wall by the door but this one, like most, is mounted on the glass side light of the collaborative room. These can be accessed via the web, show the reservations on their screen, and have controls to allow an instant reservation if the room is free. Also on the lower level, the compact shelving for the Archives and Special Collections storage vault is going in a few days ahead of schedule. On the third floor the paneling in the Saint Clare Room is about half done, as the seventh picture shows. Notice that the correct clear glass is now in the frame that will be behind Saint Clare’s statue.

But the big event this week was the move of the data center from the IT building to the Learning Commons, Technology Center and Library. We’ve been planning for this for a long time. Systems started to be shut down about 9:00 pm Friday night, and we had a contractor on site to actually move the servers and storage systems, and then started systems up. Things didn’t go as smoothly as we hoped, with a four-hour delay overnight caused by a long PeopleSoft backup process and a fire false alarm at 2:30 am in the new building that caused a half-hour evacuation until the fire department could come and verify the false alarm. The eighth photo was taken Saturday morning and shows part of the IT staff group that participated in the move. All of these people had been up all night and some had been up more than 36 hours when this photo was taken, and they all ended up working until about 7:00 pm Saturday, when there were only a few systems left to bring online. The last picture shows more staff working to install the equipment in the racks in the data center. But there was a power strip that overloaded and tripped a circuit breaker Sunday and it took most of Sunday to fix the problems that caused, then most of Monday to get most of the remaining systems up. That’s why we planned the move for a three-day weekend.

There’s a traditional rubric about IT stuff, the 80-20 rule, that says 20% of the work requires 80% of the effort and that held true in this case. It was Wednesday before all the systems were restored. IT staff, as well as one person from the Library and a couple from the Access Card office, were heroes and heroines – they put in very long hours (10 – 12 hour days in addition to the all-nighter) even though they’d been working nights and weekends for awhile to prestage equipment and move in advance the services we could.

Week of February 4 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 06:41:42 PST

Very little change in the exterior that can be seen in these photos. If you look very closely you can see there’s turf block inside the circle in the foreground of the third picture (that’s interlocking plastic hexagons that go under grass in an area that’s a fire lane, so the fire engines can drive on it without sinking). That’s about all. They’re still working on the outside, though. They’ve started to repaint the entire north side, which one of the architects said looked like it had six different shades of tan on it. And they’re continually working on landscaping, you just can’t see it.

Inside, it’s a totally different story. The building is coming together very quickly, yet there still seems to be so much that needs to get done. The fourth picture is the semi that delivered the first of the furniture that will go in the Information Commons on the first floor and lower level. I apologize for the image quality, I took this with my Blackberry when I stumbled on the truck on Monday as I was heading back to my office. The fifth photo shows some of the furniture that was in place in the lower level by Sunday. The arms hold the computer monitors and allow someone to position the screen where it’s most convenient for them.

They’re also making great progress on the cabinetry in the building. The service desk for the Information Commons has arrived and is starting to be installed, the counter for the café is in place (they drape moving pads over the counters to protect them), and the service point for the Father Norman Martin S.J. Archives and Special Collections Reading Room is starting to be installed. The Reading Room and the Exhibit Area seem to have the most work yet to be done.

The Saint Clare room has the wood paneling starting to go up but I couldn’t get a good picture. Maybe next week when more of it is done.

Week of January 28 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 12:35:39 PST

This week started with a little excitement. IT staff have been working in the data center periodically preparing for the move to the new building over Presidents’ Day weekend. The Fire Inspector for the City of Santa Clara apparently didn’t think they were really construction people and ordered them out, then to ensure they stayed out said she was going to shut down power to the data center. That led to a couple hours of scrambling to reroute campus network connections that were running through the data center, and a couple messages from me to the campus warning about a possible network outage. Things calmed down, though, power stayed on and, after testing the sprinkler systems later in the week, IT staff were allowed back into the building on a limited basis.

Other than that, everything is proceeding relatively smoothly, just not fast enough to keep my comfort level up. No dramatic changes on the outside, as the first three photos show. Landscaping is moving along, and all the concrete pavers are in, along the pathways as well as in the Café arcade (fourth photo) and under the tower (fifth photo, one of the engraved pavers that was sponsored by Lorry Lokey).

Inside, things are really coming together on the first floor and the lower level. The circulation desk was installed on the first floor, as the sixth picture shows (I apologize for the flash glare off the reflective tape on the warning pedestals) and the Information Commons area on the first floor got cleared out in preparation for the furniture that’s supposed to start arriving February 4. The wood caps that will fit over the railings on all the public stairs are starting to be installed, as you can see in the eighth picture. We’re starting to stage some of the new servers into the data center (these are the new servers for our GroupWise cluster). And finally, the window frame has been replaced in the Saint Clare room with the correct design. Of course, the glass is supposed to be clear rather than frosted, but we’ll get that fixed before the statue goes up.

Weeks of January 14 and 21 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 03:21:25 PST

This is a two week report, partly because I’ve been too busy to write and partly because the Santa Clara Fire Inspector doesn’t want people not actively working on construction in the building, so I didn’t have a chance to get inside during the week of the 21^st. The interior photos below were taken Friday the 18^th, and most of the exterior photos are from Saturday the 26^th.

The only change I notice in the Northeast Corner photo is that the wall by the transformer room on the north side has been stuccoed but hasn’t yet been painted. The view from the southwest shows the new walkway running toward the tower and three of the four palm trees that have been planted in the lawn area to the south of the building. The fourth picture shows the same three palms taken from one of the third floor terraces looking southwest. The View to the North photo is from a slightly different location than before (more to the west), since the fencing near the Graham complex has been moved. It looks like they’re going to be working on some of the trees near the new generator.

Inside the building is getting closer and closer, except on the third floor where there are still walls that need to go up! The fifth photo is of the row of collaborative study rooms in the lower level, and the sixth is of an office that will be behind the circulation desk on the first floor. The seventh picture shows the lamps that have been hung in the Saint Clare Room.

The eighth picture is some of the staff office space on the third floor, where the cubicle partitions are being installed. You can see that some of the panels are different colors. That’s because most of these furnishings were donated from a local office building where they were installed but no one ever used them. Four years later we get them but the dimensions of the cubicles don’t quite fit the building layout so we had to order some extra pieces. But (thanks to Murphy) the fabric on the original partitions isn’t available anymore and we had to use a different fabric with a slightly different color and a different finish for the new pieces.

The final picture is of the ARS, and area that I had never been in. This space is on the lower level, underneath the area where the students who take books out of the bins work. There has been a ladder down to this space since the ARS opened in January 2005, since some of the mechanical equipment is there, behind the door you can see. There’s now a door into this space from the new building (they had to cut through the concrete wall of the ARS to get there, and the dust set off the fire alarms when they did it!) and it was open as I was walking through so I took a picture. You can see that this space is open to the racks where the bins are stored.

Two weeks ago I wrote about getting a card for the doors. We thought it was for the exterior doors but, in fact, it opens any of the interior doors in the building that are now locked. There are key locks on the outside doors and I now have a copy, as well as a key for the data center. Now all I need is to be allowed into the building!

Week of January 7 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 04:16:34 PST

Happy New Year for real!

These pictures were taken around noon on January 11. I gave my wife a tour of the building for the second time and it was really interesting seeing it from a fresh set of eyes.

Again, the outside looks pretty much the same. You can notice in the first photo that the concrete sidewalk on the north side of the building is poured. My wife noticed that the ends of the wood bars in the second floor trellises on the north side are capped with copper, picking up on the color of the roof and downspouts. More landscaping progress is evident in the second and third photos (although the porta-potties they’ve brought in for the landscapers ruin the ambiance of the third photo). I took another picture to give a different view of the landscaping, this taken from what will be a north-south sidewalk running south from the building entrance. The three semicircular concrete arcs are seating areas embedded in what will be grass between the walkways. I’m not sure what’s going to go in the middle, probably concrete pavers like the rest of the walkways. Also on the outside, the heaters to make the café arcade more comfortable in winter are now installed, as you can see in the fifth picture.

There’s lots of progress inside. For the first time I noticed that the banded glass (alternating wide bands of frosted and narrow bands of clear) that will be in the sidelights of all the collaborative study rooms, and in other areas like the multimedia lab and the training and instruction rooms, have started to be installed. This picture is of a collaborative room on the lower level. The bench around the staircase in the living room is starting to be installed. It’s there to keep people from walking under the stair and bumping their heads. There will be cushioned seating and small round tables for books, beverages or laptops. The taller cabinetry behind the bench will hold sliding shelves for atlases. The carpeting is almost completely finished, although there are still some walls to be put up on the third floor, where we have a small exhibit space. I’ve posted two interior views, one of the first floor looking north from the corner by the atrium toward a part of the information commons (the main entrance is beyond the staircase you can see at the upper left), and of the third floor looking northeast from the south side of the building that shows the clerestory windows. We’ve started to install networking gear in the data center, and the air conditioning units were running when we walked through on Friday.

I’m told that the cubicle partitions for the staff work areas will start going in early next week, although there are still a few coordination issues (like fire extinquishers and light switches located behind panel walls) that need to be addressed. As of this writing, there are about three weeks before we hope to have construction finished. It’s going to be a rush.

Late update: I needed a break from work today so I thought I’d walk over to the building. I’ve had the combination for the lock on the construction fence for a long time, but Wednesday I got a card that would let me into the building (it’s now locked when no one is working) so I thought I’d check out a couple things I was concerned about. Unfortunately, there are no doors on the building that the card works in! That’s not really a problem for me, but IT has the same card and really does need to be able to get into the building anytime, especially after Martin Luther King weekend, when we’ll have equipment running production services in the new data center.

I did notice that they’d started to lay the engraved paving blocks late Friday (there weren’t any in place at noon when we walked through), on the west side of the main entrance. I found our paver, noticed a few from people I know, and noticed a few more that obviously had a story behind them that would be interesting to find out. I wonder if Development knows anything, or maybe if we could fashion a Santa Clara Magazine story around some of them.

Week of December 31 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 06:28:19 PST

Happy New Year!

These pictures were taken Friday afternoon January 4, at the very beginning of one of the worst storms the area has endured in years. There were a few minor water intrusions early in the day, partly through doors that were open to let construction crews enter the building, that caused some water to pool in the bottom of the stairwells of the east and south stairs but, as far as I know, no further leakage over the weekend.

There’s almost no change I can note in the external photos, other than progress in the landscaping. There was a little excitement the morning of January 2, when we were planning to pour concrete for some of the sidewalks on the front and north sides of the building. The President didn’t like the amount of concrete in that space so the pour was postponed while alternatives were considered. You could see the crew sitting around waiting to be told what to do, with a concrete pump already positioned and a concrete truck idling nearby. The final decision was to pour a concrete base but line it with pavers just like the walkways on the south side of the building. I think it was a good decision (sure, suck up to the boss!) because it will tie the two most public sides of the building more closely together. I also think the pavers are “friendlier” than bare concrete.

Inside things are moving really rapidly. Carpeting has started on the third floor and is essentially complete on the other floors. The glass panels that will line the public stairways are starting to be installed as you can see in the fourth picture (there will be hardwood caps over the tops), soundproofing is going into the first floor viewing and taping rooms as you can see in the fifth picture and, right on schedule, they’re starting to put power into the data center. As I said last week, we plan to start putting network equipment in there next week, so I hope the wiring is done early next week.

Week of December 24 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 05:59:01 PST

Merry Christmas!

At one point about six months ago the general contractor’s construction manager was talking about giving us the building for Christmas. Since these pictures were taken December 29 you can tell that’s not going to happen. The lower three floors are starting to look pretty close to done, but the third floor looks like there’s a lot to do. At the same time, I’ve seen A LOT of things get done in a week. We’re hoping for construction completion by the end of January so we can start putting in furnishings and electronics.

As usual recently, there’s not a lot of change to be seen in the three standard images: there’s a wall being built north of the door to the transformer room on the north side, the trellis on the east second floor staff terrace is being built, and you can barely see in the foreground of the third photo that they’ve started installing the concrete pavers that will make up the walkway to the south and west of the building.

There are a lot of changes inside: the ceiling just inside the main entry is going to be wood rather than the white tile dropped ceiling most everywhere else in the building, and that’s started going in, as the fourth picture shows; the work areas that line the south and west walls of the living room are being installed; the carpeting is essentially finished on the second floor; and the equipment racks are all in place in the data center and were being braced to meet seismic codes when I went through the building early Friday afternoon. They’re a key element since we expect to begin moving some of the new servers and network switches into that space the week of January 7, and hope to be running some services in production from that room the week of January 21. The move of the vast majority of the existing equipment (that isn’t being replaced by new) from the current IT building data center to the new building is tentatively planned for the long weekend of February 16 – 18.

Week of December 17 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 01:42:13 PST

These photos were taken the afternoon of December 21. That afternoon marked a significant event, since it was the first day since construction began that the building was locked! I found out the hard way, moving outside to take the picture of the inside of the tower and then not being able to get back in the building. I think they decided to lock it since the building would be empty until the day after Christmas.

As usual, it’s hard to tell any progress on the outside of the building, certainly in the “regular” shots. On the north side of the building the trellis above one of the second floor staff terraces was in place, as seen in the second picture, and the landscaping is making real progress, as seen in the fifth picture.

Inside, the frames for most of the bookshelves are in place on the lower level. The biggest difference from last week, though, is the atrium is carpeted and clear enough that even I can take pictures that give a sense of the size of the space. The seventh picture is taken from the south edge of the atrium on the lower level, looking north and west. The main stair down from the first floor is in the right center, and the three story portion of the atrium is in the left center. The eighth photo is taken from the first floor at the northwest corner of the atrium, looking back towards where the previous picture was shot. I think both pictures give a sense of the light, airy space this will be.

I went outside to take the last picture, looking up four stories to the ceiling of the main entrance tower through the opening in the terrace outside the Saint Clare room. I didn’t manage to center the image, but it gives a sense of the view, and how warm the wood on the ceiling looks.

But then I was locked out, and couldn’t get back into the building to see the upper two floors, so when I come back to campus next week to walk the building again there should be some significant changes.

Week of December 10 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 03:53:08 PST

These photos were taken on December 15. The main changes from last week on the exterior involve the landscaping. You can see a little bit of that on the second and third photos, but the fourth picture, taken from the third floor terrace outside the Saint Clare room, gives a much better perspective. The concrete structures running east-west will provide seating, and the meandering path running along the front of the building will be covered with concrete pavers. The area to the right of the photo will be grass with some additional trees (including, I think, several palm trees) and a very small hill near the south sidewalk (actually, a small bump :-). The space between the walkway and the building will have shrubs of different heights. It should be a very comfortable and inviting space.

Many things have changed inside in a week. As I was walking through they were removing the scaffolding from the atrium area, as you can see in the fifth photo. The pendant lamps in that area are hung and they’re on at night, so one can see into the building just like it will be when it’s open. You can see them again in the next picture, looking through the area next to the atrium that will be part of the Information Commons.

Although I don’t have any pictures (I tried but it really didn’t show up), the Wall Talker white board material has been installed in nearly all the collaborative study rooms. This is essentially white board wallpaper that covers two walls floor to ceiling in each room.

On the upper floors, the first equipment racks have been delivered to the second floor data center, and they’re starting to install the tiles on the floor of the public terraces on the third floor. The staff terraces will simply be concrete.

Week of December 3 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 06:51:43 PST

The final little bits of exterior work are being done. The travertine that will run around the base of the building on all but the south side is completely in, I think. You can see it carefully covered in the first photo. It was covered because the concrete outside the loading dock area on the northeast side got poured this week.

You can see from the next three photos that they have made more progress on landscaping. There will be a paver-covered walkway running down the south face of the building with a number of seating areas to really make it a comfortable outdoor space.

Inside the carpet has started to go in on the lower level. The fifth picture shows the color and pattern that are on what I call the “circulation spine,” the main east-west corridor on all four floors of the building. The lower level looked to be about a third done when I went through the building on Sunday the 9^th. I also took a picture of the clerestory windows on the third floor, right near the wall for the exhibit area that is being framed. I’m not a good enough photographer to really do the space justice, but it really feels open.

The final photo shows the new chillers that are on the roof of the ARS to provide cold water for ventilation of the rest of the building. The ARS has been running with its own separate set of AC equipment since January 2005.

Week of November 26 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 05:17:37 PST

I’m a couple weeks behind on updating this blog. My apologies. These pictures were taken Sunday December 2.

Again, not much progress visible from the outside from the standard three angles. The building is almost completely enclosed (there are a couple window panes still missing where they need access for power or something like that) and they continue to make progress on installing the copper roof, although I can’t say I like the looks of that blue tarp on the roof in the second photo.

They’ve been working on the exterior landscaping for a couple weeks now, laying out routes for sidewalks and such. I understand there have been some adventures, like fracturing the pipes for virtually all the dewatering wells! From the surface it doesn’t look like much but when I was inside the building I looked down and was able to see the outline of the landscaping beds that will be next to the building on the “stair step” side, as the fourth picture shows.

Inside, half the compact shelving is set up (but not finished) in the public areas of the lower level, IT has finalized where the equipment racks will go in the data center (see the sixth picture) and we’re expecting the first of the racks to arrive mid-December. We hope to be putting equipment in the racks in mid-January. The “storefront windows” that will form the interior walls of the public terraces are up, as shown in the seventh photo, and they’re starting to put in the installation frames for the wood paneling in the Saint Clare room. At least, that’s what I think those are in the last photo. There are metal clips on the frame and I assume the cherry paneling will clip on and float over these frames like a skin. I’ll have to find out why the architects designed it that way, instead of just fastening them directly to the walls.

Week of November 19 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 12:30:23 PST

There’s not a lot that looks different from the outside this week with the three “standard” views. You can see that the windows are now in on the south side between the tower and the main public area of the building. There are also copper panels going in over the entrances to the café arcade on the west and north sides, as the fourth photo shows.

The big news, though, is that they’ve started installing the copper roof! I took a roof shot from the south that shows the easternmost sawtooth roof completely covered and the next one half done. I also took a closer image of the easternmost roof from the flat roof adjacent to it.

While I was on the roof I noticed the door to one of the air handling units was open, so I took a shot of one of the fans that move air into the building (how to identify a true geek – he gets excited about a picture of a big fan that looks like a John Deere tractor).

Inside, the articulated ceiling is in over much of the first floor information commons area, and they’ve started installing both the regular and compact shelving on the lower level. And the raised floor has been extended into the Saint Clare room, which means they can start working on the room finishes. The ceiling is painted, but none of the rest of the room has final finishes on it.

Week of November 12 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 12:50:34 PST

I was out of town Wednesday through Sunday this week, and didn’t have a chance to get inside the building to take photos. I did walk around the building and do the outside shots on Monday the 19^th.

Not a lot has changed, but you can see in the first photo that there are now tiles in the squares on the east side of the building. These match the tiles that are on the ARS. The second photo shows that the framing is in for the windows on the south side of the building right next to the tower. I think that’s the last opening in the building that’s not yet weather-tight, and it should be soon. You can also see in that picture there are long bundles on the roof. I think that’s the copper roofing which should be installed soon. You can also see one of them in the last picture.

Week of November 5 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 05:25:36 PST

I was traveling Wednesday – Friday of this week, so didn’t get a chance to take photos until Sunday. I can’t see too many changes on the regular exterior shots (and I apologize for the sun flare in the first photo).

Inside they’ve started to extend the underfloor heating and ventilating into the Saint Clare room on the third floor. Although I didn’t take a photo, the “topping slabs” that bring the floor around the compact shelving rails in the lower level up even with the other floor areas have been poured.

On the roof, the tile is almost finished on the east side of the Saint Clare room roof, as the fifth photo shows.

Finally, the generator that will provide emergency power to the building has been brought in and installed on the pad on the south side of the building, next to the generator for the Graham residence complex. This is a modern, 650 kilowatt, data-center grade generator. It should be extremely reliable, and also relatively quiet.

Week of October 29 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 10:33:00 PST

The exterior changes from one week to the next are becoming harder to notice, but I’ve posted the three “traditional” views. The broken stone tile on the south wall has been replaced. I don’t know how many tiles they had to take off to get access to that one, but I’m relieved to see it whole again.

I didn’t get a photograph of it, but the exterior elevator that was on the north side of the building (used to ferry people and some materials between floors and up onto the roof) has been dismantled. It seemed that in the space of a week it was framed, sheathed, and stucco started.

There are some surprises inside, though. The patio at the bottom of the north light well was full of water when I walked through Saturday, as the fourth photo shows. I don’t think we’d had enough rain to do that so I can only assume it was deliberately flooded, maybe to test whether it was watertight?

The fifth photo is the northwest side of the lower level. I took this for two reasons. One is that it gives a slight sense of the interplay of colors inside the building. The other is that this space will be full of library shelving before too long (they’ve started to put down the rails for the compact shelving, so installation of the actual shelves should start pretty soon) and I won’t be able to get a long view like this after that time.

On the roof they’ve installed the heavy equipment for the HVAC on the large concrete pads and are finalizing the connections for all the ducting.

While I was on the roof I took the opportunity to take a closeup of the eaves of the tower and the copper drain pipes. Both of these are visible from the ground, but they look really good up close. I think the inside of the tower is going to be covered in wood, just like the eaves.

Finally, the construction fence has been pushed out on the east and south sides. I think the east side is so they can start tearing up some of the old roadway back there, and the south side is necessary so they’ll be able to start landscaping (although I think we’re several months away from that). Those changes have had an impact on traffic flow around the construction site. Foot traffic moving north and south has to detour around the construction trailers and walk between the trailers and Malley. People walking east or west have a chipboard “sidewalk” that’s been laid over the grass north of the residence halls. I find that relatively slippery if it’s wet out. And the electric carts we use to move books between the ARS and the interim library have to detour all the way east of Leavey then come back to the ARS south of Malley.

I thought it was interesting to see one of the palm trees we had relocated 18 months ago back inside the construction fence.

Week of October 22 2008

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 06:46:26 PST

These photos were taken on Sunday October 28, since I was in Seattle for the Educause meeting all week.

As you can see in the first photo, the scaffolding is down on the northeast corner, the windows are in on the east side, and the frames are in for the windows in the northeast stairway, but there’s not much difference to be seen in the other standard views. However, if you looked at the west tower roof you would have seen that they’ve strung copper wire as tie-down points and have started to position the roof tiles we saved from the Orradre building to put on the new Learning Commons. Those tiles will go on the tower and the roofs on the northeast and northwest corners of the building. The sawtooth roof areas will be covered with copper. This photo was taken from the roof of the tiles stacked next to the tower.

Most of the windows are now in, with the stairways and the space next to the ARS on the south side the areas that I think are still remaining.

Inside a lot more of the building has been painted and it’s possible to appreciate the interplay of the different interior colors. Unfortunately, they didn’t photograph well on this attempt so I’ll have to try again on a later tour.

The alarm notification devices are going in on the first floor and the lower level, the floors for the staff terraces on the second floor have been poured, and they’ve finally started putting the rails down for the compact shelving in the archives and special collections vault area on the lower level. There was a big rush for us to finalize the layout for those shelves so the rails could go in on time – that was six months or so ago.

The opening for the door onto the roof of the ARS is completely cut, so I was able to walk onto that roof for the very first time. The photo shows the HVAC equipment for the ARS, and also gives an idea of how high the parapet is, that gives the illusion of a fourth story. Before I knew how high that was I had thought to go up there and photograph some of the demolition of Orradre. That would have been really hard to do!

Week of October 15 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 02:27:34 PST

I apologize for how long it’s taken me to post for this week. I’ve been traveling a bit.

Not a lot of change visible from the outside, but I’ve posted the three “standard” pictures anyway. The stucco is finished on the northeast side. You can see in the second photo that the edges of the sawteeth above the windows and terrace openings aren’t going to be stuccoed, as I thought, but are finished in frosted glass to match the third floor windows.

Inside, the freight elevator is now in operation. There is a note hanging outside the elevator door on each floor, on a mailbox-like box attached to the wall, giving instructions on how to call for the elevator. I haven’t seen it in operation yet. And they’ve finally cut the door to the roof of the ARS from the third floor of the Learning Commons. There had been temporary access to the roof, where there’s HVAC equipment for the ARS, from a ladder on the outside of the north edge of the ARS. But the construction covered that, so this door will provide maintenance access to the roof.

Week of October 8 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:16:28 PST

I took these pictures on Friday October 12, a day we experienced the first moderate rain of the season (about half an inch). Rain, rain go away – at least until the building is weather tight, then let’s stop the drought!

Not a lot of changes on the exterior. All three “standard” views look very similar to last week. There are a few things, though. The travertine stone is completely in for one of the openings into the café arcade, including the top. It’s a really subtle effect that is more obvious in person than it is in the fourth picture. The windows are all in on the third floor, including the frosted glass up to the peaks on the west sides of the sawteeth, and around the corner structural steel, as the fifth picture shows.

Inside they’re still pulling data cabling, as the huge bundles in the sixth photo show. These were near the wiring closet on the second floor (the closet, which is really a fairly large room) is the door on the left. But the new thing that I really liked is that the lighting is in for the main hallway on the first floor, which is the last photo. It’s really much lighter than this, but I played with the shutter speed and ASA ratings to be able to see the wall sconces, which are concentric circles. There are also down lights in the soffit and lighting above the ceiling on the right. It looks really good in person!

Week of October 1 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 03:02:50 PST

These pictures were taken Saturday afternoon October 6. Stucco work is complete on the exterior of the northeast corner and they’ve started to paint there. They’re still doing stucco in the staff terrace on the third floor of that corner, and they’ve got a lot to do on the interior of the main entrance tower. There’s also some exterior sheathing to be done (I think) on the south side, above the public terraces on the third floor, as the second photo shows. They’ve started to install the windows on the third floor, as you can see in the third picture.

As I went into the building I saw something that may have been there all along, but it was certainly the first time I’d noticed it. There’s a large pipe (6 inches or so in diameter) protruding from the north wall near the light well, with a well-defined lip on the bottom that looks a lot like the lip of a pitcher. The only thing I can think it would be for is a drain pipe, but I’ll have to ask.

The thing that really surprised me was that the university’s food service vendor, Bon Appetit, was setting up for a reception in the café arcade! No one had told me about this, but it was for those people who had been on campus all day for Ambassador training. This has nothing to do with the State Department. The Ambassadors are a group of alumni, parents and friends of the university who act as spokespeople for Santa Clara within their communities. I know this won’t be the last reception, but I’d have liked to hang around long enough to hoist a glass of wine at the first event. Unfortunately, I had another event that evening and had to leave before people even started arriving.

Week of September 24 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 07:15:58 PST

I discovered that I’m not very perceptive during this week. While cooling down from a run it occurred to me that I could respond to comments to this blog by writing another comment – Duh! So apologies to those of you who have left comments and I will try to respond directly to future comments.

Exterior changes for this week include pretty much finishing the stucco work on the northeast corner of the building. There’s still some finish work to do, for example around the window openings, and the walls of the terrace off the staff lounge. The southeast and northerly views don’t show much change, except the northerly view is from closer to the building, since the construction crews have started work on the site for the emergency generator, which is south of the ARS close to the Graham residence complex. The fencing around that construction site keeps me from getting as full a view to the north as I’ve had in the past.

Inside, they’ve started to install the decorative travertine stone around the large openings in the arcade seating area for the café, as you can see in the fourth picture. This stone will also be on the openings into the area under the tower, and around the base of the building on all but the south side. You can see what that stone on the base will look like on the ARS.

The scaffolding that was used to finish off the interior of the tower at the main entrance had been removed by the time the fifth picture was taken, offering a view four stories up to the inside of the top of the tower. That didn’t last long, however, since by October 2 there was scaffolding on the terrace outside the Saint Clare room that obscured the tower.

I had mentioned the ARS viewing room last week. This week the door was completely open and I could go in and take a picture into the ARS. The windows are at the very top of the open bay that holds the bins, and there’s a great view down the aisles to anyone who would be in there, as the sixth picture shows.

Finally, they’ve started to put down the covering on the flat roof over the north part of the building. It looks like they put down five layers of about two inch thick insulation, then cover that with a waterproof membrane, as you can see in the last picture.

Week of September 17 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 07:22:52 PST

Relatively minor changes are apparent this week, both inside and out. The photos here were taken late afternoon on Friday September 21.

On the northwest corner they’re ready to start putting on stucco and have moved in a container that mixes the stucco and pumps it up to be sprayed on the wire mesh. That’s the big white and blue cylinder visible in the first picture. Also, although you can’t see it in this photo, they’ve almost completely covered the roof area on the northeast corner with a waterproofing film called Grace Ultra, which is specifically formulated for use in high temperature applications. That’s the black film you can see on the eaves in the first photo. There’s not much change visible in the next two exterior photos. It looks like there are only two rows of stone cladding to mount on two faces of the south wall and they’ll be done with that.

I did notice something wrong with the stone cladding while I was taking pictures. It looks like someone spilled green paint or some other substance on the stone between the windows near the ARS. I mentioned this to one of the construction people and they said it had been all cleaned up, but it didn’t look that way to me, as the fourth photo shows. I’ll have to find out what they’re going to do about that.

Inside the building they’re working on stringing the data cabling, and there are bundles of blue Cat 6 data cables everywhere. The fifth photo shows the inside of the wiring closet on the first floor, with all these cables hanging from the ceiling waiting to be pulled through conduit out to different parts of the building. There are somewhat smaller bundles of cable spilling out of floor tiles that have been pulled up throughout the building to get access to the cable trays that run under the floor. And in one of the wiring closets the racks that the cables will be terminated on are being installed.

I also discovered a detail about the ceiling in the Saint Clare room that I hadn’t been aware of. There are structural steel beams that run across that room, and I had thought that would be the height of the ceiling. But wallboard is starting to go up there and the ceiling will be a couple feet higher between the beams, as the sixth picture shows. This is a similar pattern to the ceiling of the café arcade directly below.

I also encountered a surprise on the second floor. The ARS was completed in January 2005. We knew there was a room near the top that had windows looking out on the storage bay of the ARS that would let people watch the cranes in action, but none of us had ever been in it. It had been walled shut for nearly three years. They’ve finally cut into that room from the second floor of the Learning Commons and, although I couldn’t go in there, I could push my camera inside and take a picture, which is the seventh photo. There will need to be some finish work done there before it’s usable.

The final interesting new thing is on the roof, where they’ve started to install the drainage at the bottom of the sawtoothed roof areas. The “V” where the sloping roof meets the vertical wall with windows is decked over with plywood that creates a series of peaks and valleys in an east-west direction, with drains in each valley that connect to piping that will run above the ceiling of the third floor, then covered with waterproofing material. I’m sure there’s some protective cover that will go over the waterproofing but we’ll have to wait and see what it is (maybe copper?).

Week of September 10 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 06:09:27 PST

I went a little crazy on photos when I took my usual Friday afternoon tour this week, because there are some really visible changes in the interior, although only minor changes on the exterior.

In the first photo you can see that they’re still working on the northeast corner of the building. You can’t see that the sheathing is all in on the east wall of the main public stairway, between the actual northeast corner and the ARS. As far as I can tell, that’s the last sheathing except for the triangular pieces at the very top of the west edges of the stairstep roof.

You also can’t see in that first photo that they’ve installed the chillers and pumps that are part of the air conditioning system into the ground floor spaces north of the loading dock. They’re inside the dark openings in the yellow sheathing at the bottom of that photo, and I had to take pictures of both. There’s also a veritable forest of big pipes being put in that same space, as you can see in the fourth picture. Several weeks back I took a photo of what looked like spring-mounted hangers in that same space, and you can see those hangers holding up the pipes. Some of the springs seem to be compressed more than others, I assume because the pipes weigh more.

The other notable change outside is that the west-facing windows are in for the third floor Saint Clare Reading Room. The other two exterior shots would show incremental progress if you compared them to last week.

I got a comment responding to my concern about the fit of the windows from an SCU alumnus, who said the gap will be filled with an expanding adhesive foam, and to relax. It’s nice to get information from people who know more about construction than I.

There was one negative exterior thing I noticed that you can’t see in the photos. Someone spilled a lot of green something on the stone cladding between the windows on the wall nearest the ARS. I don’t know what it was, and when I asked about it I was told that it had been spilled on the third floor and was almost completely cleaned up. But the green splashes were really visible, particularly down around the first floor.

Inside they’re starting to put on what look like finish paint coats in some of the areas, like the arcade for the café at the north end of the ground floor. The lights are hung and powered on the lower level where the stacks will be, as you can see in the ninth picture. The light colored walls would be labeled “dove grey” if that color were on a Bentley, and I remember the red wall being more of an orange shade than this photo shows.

There’s another interior color on the first floor, something like apricot (I really need to get the right names for these colors, or the architects are going to disown me). I also took a photo of the interior of one of the first floor collaborative rooms. This is a six-person room, and the LCD panel will be mounted in the center of the wall just straight ahead. Two of the other walls in the building will be covered with “Wall Talker,” which is a white board material that goes on like a heavy wallpaper. So each of these rooms will have two walls covered floor to ceiling with writable whiteboard.

Week of September 3 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 03:09:24 PST

There are real visible changes on the building this week, particularly on the north side. The northeast corner is the last one being set up for stucco work on the exterior and that’s now ready to go: water resistant membrane sprayed on and wire mesh in place.

The change in the north side is just astonishing. The glass is in the window frames and the scaffolding is down. That part of the building looks finished! But walking through the building it’s obvious that it isn’t. The window frames are a real loose fit in the openings, as shown in the third photo, and obviously need to be caulked or something. I’ll be curious about how they do that, because some of the gaps look pretty big to me. When you’re in that part of the building and the wind blows it makes a really interesting whistling sound, like every cheap Halloween scary movie.

Progress on the rest of the exterior is steady, with not a lot of visible change, as the last two photos show.

The glass is in on the rest of the clerestory windows and it’s clear except for the most northerly row, which uses frosted glass to hide the air handling equipment.

Weeks of August 20 and 27 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 05:09:31 PST

I was away on vacation for two weeks, so was really eager to get back into the building and see what had been done while I was away.

The sheathing for the northwest corner is completely done and they’re starting to apply the vapor barrier. Stucco and painting are pretty much done on the entry tower and café area at the west end of the building, stucco is all done inside the café arcade, stone cladding is visible on all the surfaces of the stairstep southern edge (they’re still putting what seem to be caps on the flat surfaces around the terraces where they first started the stone, but overall I’d estimate they’re 65% or 70% done), and windows are starting to go in on the north side where there were only frames when I left.

Up on the roof there’s now copper on the edges of all the eaves and they’re starting to cover the lower surface of the eaves, but there’s nothing actually on the roof yet. Glass is in on the northernmost clerestory windows on the third floor. I was surprised that it was translucent rather than transparent glass. That may be to hide all the air handling equipment and ducts on the roof. There was no glass in any of the other areas of the roof, so I don’t know if the same kind of glass goes in everywhere. I’m sure we’ll find out in another week or so.

I didn’t take many pictures of the inside, but all the raised floor is in on the lower level (which is only three inches above the concrete, rather than the 14 inches on the other floors) and they’re framing the collaborative study rooms down there. The wallboard and the door frames are in for the collaborative study rooms and the multimedia lab on the first floor, as well as most of the staff workstation areas. Things aren’t as far along on the upper two floors, but there’s still noticeable progress on framing, installing wallboard, and finishing the raised flooring. There’s power in the building and I’m told we’ll have lights in some areas next week.

I’m told the scaffolding will start to come down on the north side of the building sometime the week of September 10, and that we will probably start installing the roof tiles that same week.

Week of August 13 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 11:08:47 PST

More visible progress this week, especially on the east and west facades. On the northeast corner the framing is nearly done and they’re starting to install the exterior sheathing. On the north side the window frames are all in, but I don’t know when the glass installation begins. The most visible change is that the exterior of the main entry tower and the arcade and café area to the north has all been stuccoed, but not yet painted. The wire mesh to stucco the interior of the café is pretty much all in place, but I don’t know when they’ll start work on that.

The work on the stone cladding continues to move forward but pretty slowly. It looks as though they’re a little more than half done, but they’re going back to portions I had thought were already done. For example, there had been an area at the top of each of the first two stairsteps, just below the edge of the terraces, where they hadn’t placed stone. I assumed that was going to be done in stucco, but it now looks like they’re going back and putting up a final row of stone that goes right to the edge of the terrace openings.

There’s one other notable addition but it’s hard to see from the ground. The sawtoothed roof will be covered with copper. This week they started to put copper around the eaves of the northernmost part of the roof. It’s on the east edge of that tooth and wraps all the way around to the west edge, which is where the photo was taken. The copper sheets seem to be pretty thin but I think it’s the finish rather than some kind of flashing.

Interior work is also progressing. The first floor collaborative rooms and staff offices are almost completely framed and are being sheetrocked. On the second floor my office now has all the walls framed but no sheetrock up.

A final thing I noticed when I walked through the building was what look like shock absorbing hangers in the two story space above where the chillers are going to go. I hadn’t seen anything like this in walking through other areas, but maybe I just didn’t notice. I’ll have to find out what they’re for.

Week of August 6 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 06:08:03 PST

Framing is almost done on the northeast portion of the building, the last section that needs to be sheathed. They’ve either painted or applied a second light stucco coat to the north wall as you can see in the second photo. I think that’s very close to the finished building color. Work continues on the tower, which is almost ready to be stuccoed, and the stone cladding guys keep working their way east along the southern façade of the building.

Inside, there was a paper sign on one of the electrical panels in the UPS room on the lower level indicating the panel was powered, but the university electrician told me that he hasn’t turned on the power in the building yet, although we’re not far away from that happening. Interior framing work is speeding ahead. The walls in the administrative suite on the second floor are starting to go in, so I had to take a picture of where my office will be (in the corner, near that diagonal beam in the left center of the picture).

Week of July 30 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 06:08:41 PST

More visible changes this week, from these photos taken August 3. I was out of town the first half of the week and, as I always do when I return from a trip, walked around the building to see what was new. They’re putting the framing up on the last portion of the building, the northeast corner. The stone cladding is nearly done on the second of five stair steps as you can see in the second picture.

They’ve added smooth stucco surrounds for all the windows on the north side of the building that’s been stuccoed already, and they seem to be painted light tan, as you can see in the fourth photo. As I was walking around the building I saw what seems to be a practice piece (at much smaller dimensions, maybe three feet on a side) for those smooth surrounds leaning up against the south side of the ARS, and took a photo for posterity.

Inside the building I took a picture of the heavy bus bars that are part of the main electrical entrance for the building, on the lower level of the northeast corner. Every week when I go by there they have made amazing progress, and what once looked like an eel’s nest of thick black cables is becoming orderly and organized.

They continue to make progress inside the building. The raised floor is nearly finished on the second floor now, and they’re working steadily on the third floor. I noticed several pallets of the floor tiles with circular cutouts, which will later hold diffusers that allow the heated or cooled air out into the populated spaces, but haven’t seen any of them in the raised floor that’s been installed. I don’t know whether they’re going to go back and replace some tiles, or if the circular diffusers are only used in a few limited areas. They’ve also nearly finished framing the collaborative study rooms in the first floor information commons, as you can see in the last picture.

Week of July 23 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 09:07:06 PST

Finally, a few visible changes to the exterior of the building!

As you can see in the first photo, they’ve put scaffolding up around the northeastern part of the building, and they’ve stockpiled a lot of light gauge steel inside in that portion, so I expect we’ll see a the last of the exterior framing going up next week. They’ve also stuccoed almost the entire north side of the building, including the lip that wraps around onto the roof. And finally, as you can see in the “Southwest Corner” photo, they’ve almost finished the stone cladding on the first stairstep. It looks to me like there’s only one more row to add to get to the terrace opening. I took a closeup from the third floor in the fifth photo.

Inside the construction crews are making great progress. The raised floor is almost completely finished on the first floor, seems to be about half done on the second floor, and they’ve started on the third floor. We had thought that the area under the raised floor was going to be mostly open space, which would have made running cables after the building is open very simple. We were, of course, wrong. The sixth photo shows all the ducting and tubes that are under a portion of the floor, in this case under the larger training and instruction room on the second floor. Lots of interference to just running cables anywhere. There are lots of cable baskets running under the floor so most of the distribution should be easy. It’s just that the last 10 or 15 feet may be more challenging than we expected.

On the first floor they’re starting to frame walls on top of the raised floor. The seventh picture shows the walls going in that outline the suite of six collaborative study rooms that line the eastern edge of the first floor information commons. Five of these have six person capacities and one has room for four people because the framing around the beams intrudes into the room too much to comfortably seat more.

Finally, they poured the floor for the equipment space on Monday, and by Friday they had moved the building transformer into place just east of the east stair on the north side. I took a picture of it from the second floor landing.

I’m told the windows ought to be onsite in a couple weeks, and then we’ll really start to get a sense of what the outside of the building will end up looking like.

Week of July 16 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 05:07:11 PST

These photos were taken the afternoon of July 13 (an unpropitious day!). Not much to be seen from the outside but I’ve posted the standard three pictures anyway. The stone cladding on the stairstep portion of the building expands slowly, if you had a magnifying glass you could see that there’s rebar on the dirt at the northeast corner in the first photo, so they’re close to pouring the slab where the chillers for the building HVAC will be located. They’ve also completely refilled the ramp that had gone down to the lower level from outside the building to bring in equipment, so the ground around the building is now pretty level.

I found a pallet of the black stuff that they’re putting over the yellow exterior sheathing. It’s something called “Henry Air-Bloc 33 UV Resistant Vapor Permeable Air and Weather Barrier Membrane.” I had expected it would be a relatively thin liquid, but I saw some workmen preparing it and it’s very thick and gooey.

Last week I posted a shot of the main electrical room in the lower level, and as I was walking around inside the building I saw a few of the other electrical rooms on the various floors. The fourth shot is a room on the south end of the lower level and you can see the cables from the main electrical room curled up the service panel boxes. The fifth picture is a room on the first floor in almost exactly the same relative location, but the cables have been neatly placed and the circuit breaker blocks are in place.

The sixth photo is a space on the first floor where the raised floor passes over the air highway that wraps around the service core of the building. You can see at the top that the air highways have a sheetmetal cover, but the pedestals for the raised floor have to be installed before the cover goes on, then the cover is bolted to the pedestals. Later they come back to install the raised floor tiles and remove the bolts from the cover and attach the tiles.

They’ve also been doing some concrete pouring on the roof, since all the forms for the equipment pads have been filled in, as you can see in the seventh photo.

The final shot is a closeup of one of the limestone blocks that are being used for the stone cladding. There were a lot of fossils in this limestone bed, as you can see in the picture. Some of the blocks have almost none, most have many indentations that were made be shells, and on a few you can see leaf prints.

Week of July 9 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 06:07:39 PST

Again not much different on the outside. They’re starting to stage exterior sheathing near the northeast corner, but I suspect it will be awhile before they start putting it up, since the concrete still needs to be poured for the ground floor spaces north of the loading dock that will hold the chillers and the transformer for the building. The views from the southwest and south show that the stone cladding is climbing slightly higher on the first two steps of the south façade.

I walked through the building like I usually do on Friday afternoon (much better than sitting at my desk all the way to the end of a long week). They’re still working on the raised floor on the first and second levels. I did take one picture, of the interior of the main electrical room on the lower level of the building. I know it’s going to eventually be nice and neat, but it looks like a mess now. Most of the black cables you see are multistrand wires nearly an inch in diameter.

Week of July 2 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 04:07:57 PST

These pictures were taken Saturday July 7 (7/7/07, a propitious day!). There isn’t much noticeable difference, but in the second photo you can see that the stone cladding has been installed across the lower edge of the first couple stairsteps. I had expected they would work vertically, as they did with the sheathing, but we need to install a security camera on the corner near the top of the first stairstep, and the architects haven’t quite figured out how that’s going to be done, so the stone is going in horizontally, at least at first.

On the north side they’ve started to install the wire mesh that will allow the stucco to attach to the building, but I didn’t take a picture. I don’t think they’ll actually start installing stucco until the whole building is ready.

Inside, things are moving quickly. It looks like the raised floor is installed in about half of the first floor (the main east-west traffic route and the staff areas on the north, not the public areas in the stairstep). The air highway sheet metal is being placed on the second and third floors. I verified that the remaining pilasters on the lower level were shotcreted last week when the wall was closed.

The last two photos are something whimsical. I gave a building tour last Thursday for a prospective donor, and she noted something up on the roof. On the eastern edge of the northern roof sawtooth, someone had written “WE ARE DONE” on the steel beam, and next to that a name, “JBerkheimer.” I don’t know who he or she is, but I’m aching to be able to write a similar sentiment in some hidden space in the building!

Week of June 25 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 05:07:46 PST

Another week of a lot of work, but much of it internal to the building shell. As you can see in the third photo (photos taken Friday June 29), the sheathing is now down to the last of the stair steps next to the ARS on the southeast corner of the building.

You can also see in the second photo that they are starting to waterproof the sheathing (that’s the black material applied to the sheathing just to the right of the tower) and then put up the stone cladding that will wrap around the “stair step” side of the building. The fourth photo is a closer view of the stone. You can see that the gaps between stones are two different sizes, most of them fairly tight but occasionally a couple wider gaps. The wider gaps will help create a banding effect on that surface of the building. The fifth photo shows detail of the metal clips that hold the stone onto the wall. It looks to me like they simply screw into the sheathing (or, more probably, into the metal studs underneath the sheathing) and fit into slots that are cut in the top and bottom surfaces of the stone blocks. The sixth photo shows some of those slots. I think those are cut on-site, not in Italy where the stone is finished.

Inside, I got a picture of where the first floor air highway connects to one of the vertical risers (actually, with all the air handling equipment on the roof, those ducts are probably sinkers). This is over near the freight elevator on the northeast side of the first floor. Further around on the south side of the first floor, they’ve set out all the pedestals for the raised floor, but they’re not cemented down yet.

I also got a shot of some of the peripheral units that blow heated air up over the windows to keep cold air from making those areas chilly during what passes for winter in California. This scene is down near the south edge of the first floor, in an area that will be occupied by library staff. The vertical unit in the foreground is one of the elements that connects to the air highway. It contains a heating element (you can see some of them on the floor) that hot water circulates through to warm the air before it gets up to where people are, then a fan blows air through those black anaconda-like flexible ducts over the window, through four foot long vents in the raised floor. I’m really curious how all of this is going to come together, and will try to get a closeup of what they look like installed (if I can find one connected where I can still see under the raised floor).

The final picture shows the outside of the wall where the ramp went down to provide vehicle access to the lower level. That got filled in this week, and eventually the ramp will get filled in to bring the ground level to uniform height (the truck is parked there collecting debris from the wallboarding under way on the first floor). I assume they also finished a couple of the pilasters that hadn’t been poured on the lower level, but didn’t have time to get down there to look.

Week of June 18 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 02:07:34 PST

Lots of changes this week, but most of them are inside, or on top of, the building, where most people can’t see them.

The pictures I’m posting were taken on Friday afternoon June 22, but Monday afternoon I had a chance to walk through the building with the architect on his first visit since one could actually go through the space. It was really interesting to see the different spaces through his eyes and appreciate the things he saw that I didn’t. But there were some really inspiring moments, too. For the first time I stood in the center of the main entryway, looked up through the hole in the center of the third-floor terrace outside the St. Clare Room, all the way up to the top of the tower. It’s a great view, such a feeling of space and grandeur.

When I walked the space again Friday afternoon it was easy to see just how much work had been done in only four days. In the first picture you can see that the wall for the loading dock has been poured and the forms are gone. The View to the South doesn’t look any different, and I’m going to stop posting that view unless something noticeable has happened there. In the View to the North you can see that the exterior sheathing covers another couple of the steps in the stairstep south side.

Inside, they’ve started to put down the raised floor on the first level. The first, second and third floors have a 14” raised floor that’s used to distribute power and data, as well as heating and ventilating air. To install the floor, height-adjustable pedestals are glued to the concrete floor with quick-setting glue. The pedestals have square plates at the top with holes in each corner, and the 2’x2’ floor tiles are then screwed to the pedestals. They only work on a relatively small area at a time, putting down the pedestals, then going back and putting in the tiles to the alignment isn’t lost. You can see this detail in the fifth photo (which is of the area at the north end of the first floor where instructional technology staff and the subject specialist librarians will have their work areas. You can also see the cable baskets that control distribution of cabling under the floor.

The sixth photo shows one of the “air highways” that help guide ventilating air around under the floor. Air comes down two very large vertical distribution shafts (one near the east end of the building and the other near the west end) then out into the air highways. The one in the photo runs east-west down the main communication spine on the first floor (the building’s main entrance will be where the light is visible in the upper center of the picture). A main air highway circles the center core of restroom and elevator space on each floor, and secondary highways branch out under the raised floor in the public areas of the building. Then it flows at lower pressure out under the floor in general through vents like the one you can see in the left center of the photo.

An interesting aspect of the air highway distribution system is that sometimes electrical or data cabling needs to cross a highway. The solution is to build a tunnel, like you can see in the next picture.

The biggest surprise for me was on the roof. When I’d been up there on Monday with the architect the roof was pretty barren, just a few stanchions mounted on the roof surface that I couldn’t guess the purpose for. But there was a crane on-site Wednesday and Thursday, and by Friday afternoon the roof was nearly filled with very large ducting for distributing air from the chillers on the roof over to the vertical distribution ducts I mentioned earlier. The next two photos are a couple different views of the roof, just to give a sense of how crowded it now is up there.

The last two pictures are of a couple terraces in the building. The first is one of the public terraces on the third floor. This space is about 25’ by 38’, shielded from the sun by the slanting roof, but otherwise open-air. You can just make out the line of the west hills in the distance. We’ll have tables and chairs out there so people can enjoy the temperate California climate year-round.

The last picture is one of the staff terraces on the second floor on the north side of the building, taken looking west. This one will have a trellis over it, but won’t be completely sheltered like the public terraces. Notice how wide the north wall is, but the hand rail is on the inside edge so no one will be tempted to sit on it! They haven’t poured the floor for this terrace yet. I think the way that’s done is that the center section is filled with foam blocks to occupy much of the volume, then a concrete shell is poured around it to actually form the floor surface. This gives a durable surface without requiring too much concrete, with its associated weight.

Week of June 11 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 05:06:53 PST

Mostly minor visual changes this week. You can see in the Northeast Corner photo that they’ve put up the forms for pouring the walls of the loading dock (just barely in the lower left corner). The other photos show continued progress on the exterior sheathing of the building.

The first shipment of the stone cladding for the stairstep portion of the building along the south side arrived this week. It comes pretty well boxed up and protected from damage by foam padding. The stone itself is French and has a lot of fossils embedded in it. It’s quarried in France then sent to Italy for processing, then loaded into ocean freight containers and shipped by boat. It should provide a nice visual and tactile contrast to the glass and stucco that comprise the rest of the surfaces of the building.

A funny story about the stone. We debated for weeks about whether this was the right stone, whether the fossils were too much, whether we could find an American substitute that worked as well, took samples out next to the building so we could see them in sunlight, and endless other details. Right in the middle of this I went to the Educause conference in Dallas and was invited to a lunch by Oracle. I was one of the first people there, walked into this beautifully restored dining room in an old building, and one wall was the same stone we were considering for the outside of the Learning Commons! It looked really good, too, so I was convinced on the choice at that moment.

Week of June 4 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 01:06:31 PST

Work continues on completing the exterior sheathing of the building. Very minor differences are noticeable most places from week to week, and I’ve put up the four standard views just for historical purposes.

Some spaces, however, are starting to be almost completely sheathed. The north side of the café and Saint Clare Room are almost done. You can see the arcade entrance into the outdoor but sheltered section of the café, and above that the window looking north out into the Alameda Mall that the statue of Saint Clare will stand in front of. The west wall of that space is almost sheathed, as well. You can see the walkthrough openings into the café, and the tall window openings for the Saint Clare Room above them. You can also see the banner Devcon hung congratulating this spring’s graduating class.

I got a chance to go into the building late Friday afternoon June 8 and took a bunch of pictures. There’s a lot of scaffolding on the inside around the windows on the stair-step area on the south of the building, so it seems less spacious than it did the last time I was in there. But having a lot of the sheathing on gives a much more realistic view of what the lighting might be in various locations of the building. I’ve posted photos of the atrium taken looking west towards one of the tall windows and also looking back east toward the stairs to the main floor. There are also photos of the area on the main floor where the circulation desk is going (it will extend in a rounded right angle from the counter surface you can see in the left center of the ninth photo), the stairs running between the second and third floor at the west end of the building, and the inside of the Saint Clare Room.

Week of May 28 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 06:06:53 PST

Similar story again this week. I see construction people all over the job site, but it's really difficult to see the progress being made. The north wall is almost completely sheathed, and you can begin to see one of the staff terraces on the north side of the second floor start to become apparent, but not much else looks different.

Components for the five elevators in the building (only two of them for public use) are on-site and stacked up near the ARS.

I'm told they're almost done with framing on the lower level, and are starting to put in conduits for electrical and data, and even starting to put up sheetrock. I'm planning to tour the building next week, so am really anxious to see what's changed since we went through about three weeks ago.

We've been working on interior furnishing design, with weekly meetings about the function of various spaces, and the feel we want for that space. Next week we have a field trip to San Francisco to look at a lot of different styles, not to pick something out but so the designers can get our reactions to various features, materials, and shapes. We'll also be looking at some new AV and collaboration technologies.

Week of May 21 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 06:06:51 PST

I was gone the first half of this week to a conference of all the IT management people of the US Jesuit universities. But even being away and coming back after nearly a week it's really relatively hard to see any change from last week. They're still working on the sheathing for the building (as they will be for some time). The north side has much of the first two floors sheathed, the south side of the tower is sheathed, and they've extended the sheathing on the "zig-zag" side of the building a little further toward the ARS and toward the roof. The scaffolding is now up further toward the ARS, as well, and the framing for windows there is going up.

In the design meetings, we're concentrating on cabling systems and AV stuff, and on modifying the interior cubicle layouts to accommodate a number of vents that force conditioned air across the exterior windows. None of this will be visible to people using library resources and services, but it's causing a bit of a ruckus for staff.

Week of May 14 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Mon, 21 May 2007 10:05:31 PST

This week they started putting up the exterior sheathing for the building. You can see it stacked on the scaffolding in the second and third photos, and attached to the light steel studs in the third photo. As this goes in place the layout of the windows becomes much more evident. The fourth picture shows a closeup of the sheathing on the exterior walls, and also the exterior plywood that's going up as a base layer on the sawtooth roof over the public areas. This will eventually be covered with a sandwich of insulation, waterproofing, and copper that will form the actual roof.

I suspect the rest of the building will get sheathed fairly quickly, and then we'll get a much better idea of how much light there will actually be in the building when it's finished.

Week of May 7 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Mon, 21 May 2007 10:05:27 PST

Not a lot that looks different in the "standard" photos this week. These pictures were taken May 11 in the afternoon. The last stair went in this week, which you can just see at the left side of the first photo. The exterior framing is still going in and the window layouts are becoming more apparent.

The really big event for us was a tour of the inside of the building. I took a whole bunch of photos, but only posted a few of them to the web. Interior framing is almost done on the lower level, and is going in on the other floors, working up from the lower level just like the other trades have done (our tour followed the same route, lower level to third floor). This framing is for walls that go all the way from the ceiling to the poured concrete floor. The rest of the walls will sit on top of the raised floor on the top three levels, and those will be installed after the raised floor gets put in, starting in mid-June.

The first photo is the group who took the tour guide, Carl Fussell and Todd Schmitzer of IT, Liz Salzer from the University Library, Nancy Cutler from Media Services, and Andre Lumsey from Devcon, who was tour guide and narrator.

The first interior photo shows the stair leading up to the first floor from the casual seating area on the lower level. We've been calling this space the "Living Room." It's at the bottom of a three-story atrium and the main floor forms kind of a balcony around it.

The next photo shows the same area looking down from the Information Commons area on the first floor. The stairs that are in the first photo are barely visible here in the left center of the picture. The new book nook ("nook" is my term, I don't think the librarians will call it that!) is just inside the secure area of the building, by the west stairs that lead up to the second floor. There will be shelves to hold the most recent acquisitions and comfortable lounge furniture. This area is just around the corner from the café, and will be the perfect place to bring a cup of coffee and browse through the latest books. There's a big window in the west wall (the one at the center of the photo) and several windows on the south wall, just to the left of the area covered in the picture.

The fourth photo shows the continuation of the stairs from the previous picture up from the second floor to the third. This is also a two-story space, with glass wall around the two interior walls to keep noise from intruding on the quiet study space on the third floor. This photo also shows you the north side of one of the saw-toothed segments of the roof. The light area on the left of that sawtooth will be glazed so that soft light will flood the entire third floor.

The fifth picture shows the Saint Clare reading room from the terrace just to the south, which is directly above the main entrance. This space will be a classic library reading room - 20 foot ceilings, wood paneled walls, very comfortable furniture, quiet.

The last photo shows one of the two other public terraces on the third floor. Both of these are open on the sides but roofed over, so it will be possible to sit outside and enjoy the California climate all year round, with a view out to the hills on the west. The rebar is in place for the floor that will be poured here to match the level of the 14 inch raised floor that's throughout the building, except on the lower level.

Weeks of April 23 and 30 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 11 May 2007 06:05:27 PST

I was traveling the whole week of April 23, and didn't get a chance to write anything or take photos the week I got back, so this entry covers a two week period. The photos were taken Friday May 4.

The biggest visual change is that scaffolding has gone up around a significant portion of the building, that framing the exterior of the building has started, and that interior framing has advanced significantly (they're framing on the second floor now; in general, the various trades work up in the building from the lower level.

You can see some of the scaffolding on the north side of the building in the first photo, and even more clearly in the second photo. If you look closely in the second photo you can see the order of the windows on the first and second floors of the north side of the building. The horizontal bars mark the top and bottom of the window openings.

The window structure is even more apparent in the third photo. The framed parts of the exterior under the saw-toothed roof clearly show where the windows will be on the west and south faces of the structure. The large opening in the framing on the left of that photo is not a window, but is one of the open entries into the tower that marks the main entrance of the building.

We're going to get to tour the building next week, so I'll try to take good photos (or at least as good as you can expect from an engineer) of some of the more interesting public spaces in the building.

There was a comment last week asking about the status of construction of the business school building, and whether I (or someone else) would be writing a blog about that. The business building hasn't been approved for construction yet. There has been a lot of work done to prepare the site (two houses on that site were moved west to become part of the Jesuit Residence compound, and archeological work has been completed) but the Trustees haven't yet approved starting construction. There's a Board of Trustees meeting scheduled for May 18, though, so things may be starting after that. Watch for an announcement or a flurry of activity. I won't be blogging about that since it?' not my building, certainly not in the sense of my frequent involvement with the Learning Commons and Library. I don't know if anyone in the business school will try to chronicle the construction progress as I?'e done here. I do know that the construction period is shorter for the business building than for the Learning Commons and Library, about one year total.

Week of April 16 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 06:04:54 PST

These photos were taken late on Friday April 20.

The big event that happened this week was on Monday, when they poured the concrete roof for the northern, flat-roofed section of the building. The construction manager had suggested I could get up on the roof during the pour and take some photos, but I got too busy to take the time to do so.

I was in a workshop on IT Leadership that I co-organize for our Executive Development Center Tuesday through Thursday and didn't get a chance to look at progress on the building, but going back to my office late Thursday I saw a small truck-mounted crane easing sections of stairway inside the structural envelope. These were part of the western public stairway that runs from just inside the secure zone of the library up to the second floor. You can see it in the fifth photo. There's a separate section that will run to the third floor that isn't in yet, and a stair down to the lower level that runs along the north wall of the atrium. That is there but I can barely see it from outside the construction fence, and couldn't get a photo that showed enough to bother posting.

The last photo shows some of the light gauge steel framing that's starting to go in on the first floor. This section is near the north edge of the building, and is the outline of what I think is the Multimedia Lab. That's going to be a 30-person facility with high-end Macs that can be used occasionally as a classroom by classes that need good media manipulation capabilities, and will be open for use by anyone when it hadn't been reserved.

Week of April 9 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 06:04:27 PST

Not a lot to see this week. They've started working on fireproofing the steel on the second floor, the stairway in the southeast corner is in (as you can see in the third photo), and they're starting to install conduit and other ceiling-hung elements on the first floor, as the last photo shows. The conduit is some of the pipes that were on pallets in the construction yard in a photo a couple weeks ago that I assumed was conduit, but wasn't sure. This photo shows how all of it fits together, and how they route it through the building. I'm told all of that stuff is done on the lower level, and almost all the framing is done, but I haven't had a chance to get into the construction site and down there to take some photos.

There's no View to the South photo this week. I went up to the Engineering Design Center to take the photo as I normally do, but both bays on the south side of the facility were occupied by students using the computers for lab, and I didn't want to push myself past them and disrupt everything just to take a photo.

Week of April 2 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 08:04:25 PST

These pictures were taken the morning of April 9. We're beginning to see noticeable things happening again. They've begun fireproofing the structural steel, which is the white coating you can see in the first photo. I'm told all the steel in the lower level is already coated.

They've also started installing some of the HVAC ducting that was in the construction yard last week. There are two main vertical risers that bring air from the chillers and ventilation equipment on the roof down to the various floors, one at the east end and the other at the west end (surprise). You can see the east one in the center of the first photo, and more clearly in the closeup in the second photo.

They've also finished pouring concrete for the third floor, as you can see in the fourth photo, taken from the roof of the Mechanical Engineering building.

In the fifth photo you can see the west HVAC riser, running vertically above the cab of the truck in the center of the photo. The top of that riser is awfully visible, which surprised me a lot. The architects have insisted we not have antennas for the cable TV system on the roof because it might ruin the look of the building, but the HVAC duct looks pretty visible to me. I hope there's a parapet that hides that from the ground when the building is done.

Next week they continue fireproofing the second floor. I'm told that they're already starting to frame some of the interior walls on the lower level, but I haven't talked my way down there yet. I'll have to work on that.

Week of March 26 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 05:04:35 PST

I was in Baltimore the last half of this week for the ACRL conference and didn't get back until late Sunday, so these photos were taken first thing Monday morning, April 2.

The second floor has been poured, the stairs are placed in the northwest stairwell, and we're still a little ahead of schedule.

Some of the forms around the Lower Level walls are being removed, and I was able to get a shot of some of the conduits that run through the wall for the south side cable entrance. There are 12 conduits that come in here, and will run above the Lower Level ceiling to the room housing the Main Distribution Frame (MDF). There are another eight conduits that enter the building from the north side. Having two entrances allows us to configure the outside cable plant in a loop topology, which minimizes the effect of a catastrophic problem with one of the entrances (the proverbial "backhoe" incident).

I was so involved in trying to get a good photo of the conduit entrance that I forgot to take a photo from the south. The one here was taken from the southwest corner, across Market Street from the construction site, by George Carlson. Thanks to George for allowing me to use it.

Next week they'll start installing some of the ducting for the HVAC system, and it's already placed around the construction site.

Week of March 19 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:03:55 PST

These pictures were taken Sunday March 25. Not a lot has changed. They have poured the concrete for most of the first floor, and also half of the second floor, as you can see in the first two photos.

It's now much easier to see the lightwell for the staff work areas on the lower level, and the two staff terraces that flank that opening on the second floor, as you can see in the fourth photo.

There are a bunch of things being delivered to the site that I can't identify positively, or place where they go in the building. There are a number of fabricated steel staircases, but they're pretty long and they've got a landing half way through them. I was told by one of the architects this morning that they're for the stairwell down to the lower level from the information commons, that runs along the edge of the atrium. I didn't remember that those had a landing half way (she said people would get tired if they had to walk all that distance without a chance to stop!) but I'll believe it. Maybe, then, that's a double-wide stair, and the other piece is for the stair from the second to the third floor, in the center of the building.

There are also a lot of aluminum pipes of varying diameters that fit together like the PVC plumbing pipes you can buy at a big-box home improvement store and then have lock bolts that keep them tight. I doubt they're for plumbing, but maybe electrical or data conduits?

Week of March 12 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 06:03:54 PST

The construction is still driving hard. I took these pictures Saturday the 17^th and there were a few people working.

I was really worried that this week I wouldn't be able to point out anything that had changed in the pictures from last week, but I found something: the forms are up for the pour of the east half of the first floor flooring. And if you look hard, they're starting to set out the light gauge steel on the roof of the Saint Clare Reading Room, which is the tall structure at the northwest corner of the building (far right center of the "Northeast Corner" photos).

Other than that, things look pretty much the same. On Thursday I was able to get a clear view of the conduit penetrations through the foundation on the south side of the building, but didn't have a camera. By Saturday there were frames up blocking that view.

Week of March 5 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 05:03:44 PST

These photos were taken late on the afternoon of March 9, because I was leaving for a conference on the weekend and wouldn't be on campus before I left.

The big thing that happened this week is that they poured concrete on the western half of the first floor, as you can seen in the first photo. Each floor is formed by light gauge corrugated steel, then rebar is placed over that, then concrete gets poured on top of that. They're also pouring the upper half of the concrete walls for the lower level at the same time. I think those were poured in two halves because they have to form the penetrations through the wall on both the north and south sides for conduits for the campus networking infrastructure. I think the second half of the floor pour is scheduled for the week of the 19^th.

The second photo is a view into the arcade that forms most of the seating area for the café in the building. It's a two story high space open to the outside on the north, west and south through tall openings. But we're fabricating sliding glass doors for the west side that will block out wind and rain, and we'll have heaters (and LCD screens!), so it's really an all-year, all-day space.

Not much change visible in the rest of the building. You can see from the third photo that they're continuing to put in the stairs. All the flights in the northeast corner stairway are in.

The fourth photo shows where the data center is going to be on the second floor. Each of the rectangular bays in the building is about 38.5 feet long (EW) by 25 feet deep (NS). The data center occupies two of those bays for equipment, plus a little more space for storage of equipment and supplies. The easternmost of the data center bays is in the right center of this photo, behind the diagonal beams and bounded on the west by the diagonal beams that run NS. One door to the data center will be between the EW diagonal beams, and the eastern bay will hold the phone system and the network switches. The western bay will hold mostly servers. There won't actually be a wall between the two halves, just some kind of covering on the beams (I don't know whether they'll be framed or just have the fireproofing exposed).

Week of February 26 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 04:03:15 PST

In what seems like a recurring theme, you have to look really hard comparing this week's photos to last week's to see much difference. These photos were taken late on Friday March 2.

The BIG news is that steel erection is done, the crane is disassembled, and off-site. I didn't see the crane set up when it first came in and was intrigued that it requires a couple of semis to move the large booms, in addition to the self-propelled crane. They're still doing welding on some of the joints, but no more big pieces of steel are going in place.

The Northeast Corner picture shows one of the new things from a week ago. (Quick, go back to last week and compare that to this week and see if you can figure out what it is.) They've started to put the stairs in on the northeast stairwell. This will be the primary staff circulation stair within the staff areas at the north of the building, as well as the primary staff entrance to the building. There are four stairs around the perimeter of the building, one of which is a public stair (at the east end, near the ARS), and one interior set of stairs that provide a path down to the bottom of the atrium, and then up to the second and third floors near the west side of the building.

There was another comment asking for floor plans. We're redesigning the training and instruction rooms that will be on the third floor, so we don't have a set of plans that will be accurate. I've been trying to get a set from the architects, but they're really swamped finalizing a lot of details the construction crews need to be able to order components in advance, so we don't cause delays. We're a little ahead of schedule and want to stay that way.

Week of February 19 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 05:03:51 PST

This has been a rainy week, but the construction crews have managed to keep working through it and are still on schedule.

You can't see much change from last week in the first two photos, but in the third photo you can see that the skeletal structure is nearly complete. The big change from last week is the completion of the sawtooth roof over the public areas of the building. The only thing I know that isn't up there yet are two of the beams that fit on the angled roof of the second step of the stair-step public area of the building (you can just see two cutout notches where those beams will go on the horizontal crossbeam in the upper center of that picture) and some lighter steel beams that attach where the angled beams extend past the vertical portion of the sawtooth roof.

I'm really grateful that the crews kept working through the rain, but I can't help but look at the steel rusting from exposure to the weather and get all twitchy. I know they're going to spray fireproof coating over all of that which will stop the rust in its tracks, but I grew up in northern Minnesota, where cars started to "melt" six or seven years after they first hit the road. I just don't like rust!

There was a comment to last week's posting about growth capacity, and asking whether the building was designed to add another story at some point in the future. The twenty year growth estimate is just that, an estimate, based on increasing the collections in the amounts, and in the same formats, as we have historically done. Many of our new materials, particularly in periodicals and in government documents, are now being acquired in electronic formats, so I expect physical collections will grow more slowly than they have in the past. The building isn't designed to add a floor (in fact, because of seismic requirements, only certain areas of the first, second and third floors can hold stacks) but we can move to compact shelving in the lower levels, where the open stacks will be, and increase capacity by about 100,000 volumes that way, if need be.

Week of February 12 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 05:02:59 PST

There?s obvious evidence that they?re making progress on the structural skeleton of the building, but not from all angles. The consistent photos of the construction site I?ve been taking, of the northeast corner of the site from the parking structure and the view to the south taken from the Engineering Design Center, look pretty much like they did last week. But if you go around to the other side of the site and look at it from the south, the progress is clear. In fact, I had to back up onto the grass in front of the Graham residence complex to get a photo that showed how much has been added. The façade of the steel structure has been pushed all the way to the south next to the ARS and just needs to have the roof beams added. The crane is out of the lower level, and the crews will be working next week to fill in the rest of the building, which should be finished on February 23. It?s amazing to me how quickly this happened, just seven months from starting demolition of Orradre to completion of the structural steel.

On the other hand, the whole structural component was supposed to have been completed on Friday the 16^th, and we scheduled a ?topping out? celebration for when the last beam was supposed to go into place. Things slowed down, though. The crews lost a day to rain Friday of last week, and apparently the original projection was a little optimistic. We were probably a week of work away from actually being done when we had the celebration, but that didn?t dampen the mood.

Devcon, our construction company, hosted a barbeque lunch, printed up T-shirts for everyone invited, and everyone had a great time (I didn?t get a T-shirt because I arrived a few minutes late, but I did get lunch and two cookies!). The President and Provost were there, the CEO of Devcon, and lots of other people involved with the university or with the building construction in some way.

A tradition at these events is to have the last beam available for people to sign, and then it gets hoisted into place. The fourth photo shows the beam, and the fifth some of the undergraduate student body officers signing their names to the beam. Then, very quickly, the crane was attached and the beam hoisted away. I wanted to get some closeups of the beam being lifted, but it happened so fast that all I got was a distant shot, even on full zoom. And rather than being put immediately into place, the beam just got placed on the roof, since they had to add to the structure to create the space the beam was supposed to fill. I came back later that afternoon and took a picture of the beam in place at the ceiling level of the third floor.

I took advantage of being inside the construction fence to take a shot into the main entrance, and along the main circulation spine on the first floor. For those of you who are local, you can get a sense for how long that will be by going to Malley. Walk into the weight room, stand at the far west wall in front of the doors, and look back along the hallway. That?s almost exactly the length of the main corridor in the Learning Commons.

Week of February 5 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 05:02:12 PST

Sometimes even I find it difficult to tell what?s changed after another week of steel construction. These pictures were taken Saturday February 11 in the rain. The most noticeable thing is in the first photo, where you can see they?ve completed the outline for the roof structure on the northeast corner of the building. The space directly under the roof is open storage space, and I don?t know whether Facilities will allow us access to that space. Right below it on the northeast corner of the third floor is the terrace off the staff lounge, which will have a view of the parking structure and the roof of Malley, but also a pretty spectacular view of the east hills.

The second photo is a shot directly through the second floor of the building. The space in the center of this picture will be offices for networking and system administration staff, with the data center occupying the second set of bays behind the diagonal steel braces. This photo also gives you a good view of the corrugated steel that they?ll pour concrete in to form the floors and roof of the building. If I remember correctly, that?s supposed to start the last week of February.

The third photo shows the part of the skeleton left to complete. The crane?s been repositioned and is pointing directly out of the foundation by the ramp up to ground level, but it?s still braced for work, so I assume they?ll be still be using it from there, but I thought it was going to move out of the lower level this week. There?s another row of steel that I think will go across just north of the crane before it moves. At the very least they need to finish the row of framing for the clerestory windows.

It rained the last half of the week (the construction crews didn?t work Friday), with rain forecast for part of the week coming up. I don?t know if that will affect the schedule or not (hoping not, of course). I?m taking a short vacation the early part of next week, so I?ll be reduced to watching the action on the web cam again.

Week of January 29 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 09:02:06 PST

The BIG news this week is that Fr. Locatelli announced at the Golden Circle Theatre Party on January 27 a $20 million gift from the Sobrato Family to the Learning Commons and Library, which brings the amount raised for the building to $80 million of the $95 million total cost. We’ll be adding a brief press release about that to the new library web site really soon.

The steel erection seems to be accelerating to me. You can see from the first photo, taken Saturday February 3, that the entire north side of the excavation is pretty much filled with steel, and there’s not a lot to see anymore looking to the south from the Engineering Design Center on the second floor of the mechanical engineering building. Just rows of decking for what will be the second and third floors of the Learning Commons.

The northeast corner will have a sloped roof on it, like that over the Saint Clare Reading Room, covering that portion of the building where you see girders sticking up. It will be “L” shaped and, I expect, will go on early next week.

The skeleton of the new part of the building is now tied into the structural steel that was left exposed on the outside of the ARS, as you can see in the third and fourth photos. The opening you can see at the top of the ARS in the third photo was at the top of a ladder running up the outside of the ARS, to provide access to mechanical equipment installed on the roof. When the building is complete that opening will be filled in and the roof access will be through a door on the third floor of the Learning Commons, into what is now the west wall of the ARS, in the upper left rectangle of the ARS structural steel you can see in the fourth photo.

The fifth photo shows the portion of the building that will be an atrium when we’re all done. Two-thirds of the space from the edge of the steel you can see to the south wall of the lower level will be open from the lower level to the ceiling of the second floor (three stories high), and to the ceiling of the first floor on the other third. There will be a stairway descending from the first floor to the lower level along the face of the steel you can see in that photo.

We’re told that the last piece of steel should go into place February 15 and we’re working on a “topping out” celebration. But rain is forecast for multiple days from February 7 on, so I don’t know if that will affect the schedule.

There was a comment to last week’s post requesting that copies of the floor plans for the building be put on the web site. We just finished the latest set of combined drawings and I’ll put up a pdf of the floor plans for those as soon as I can. Just keep in mind that they’re still changing! We’re rethinking the size and layout of the two training and instruction rooms on the second floor, as well as the computer lab there, so these latest drawings won’t reflect a small part of the finished building.

Week of January 22 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 06:01:45 PST

More steel erection this week, and they’re really starting to fill in the building skeleton. If you compare this week’s photos with last week’s you’ll see that much more of the northeast quadrant of the building has been filled in, and the row of framing for the clerestory windows has extended east. The second photo shows that the skeleton lines up with the west edge of the ARS.

I’m told there’s only about another four weeks until the structural frame is complete, and we’re starting to think about a “topping out” ceremony when the last piece of steel is fitted (I wonder if I can talk my way into turning a wrench or something like that).

The last photo gives another view of the light well on the north side of the building. It’s the rectangle without any decking just left of the higher wall in the center of the picture. There won’t be direct sunlight into the well but there should be good ambient light. We added a door into the light well so we can put potted plants or trees out there.

Week of January 15 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 05:01:36 PST

I went a little crazy with the photos this week – took a total of 25, but I’m not going to bore you by posting all of them. These photos were taken late afternoon on Friday January 19, after the joint Trustee/Regent meeting. I must have looked pretty silly lying on the parking structure floor in my blazer to take the pictures under the raised floor mockup.

I still get surprised by how massive the building is, especially when I’m close to it, or when I’m walking around campus and catch a glimpse of the top of the entrance tower over some other campus building.

The first photo shows that they’ve started to put up the structure for the saw-toothed roofline. The second photo gives a little closeup of that. It looks as though the clerestory windows are about as high as the floor-to-floor height of the other stories, so there should be plenty of light in the public areas on the third floor. The third photo shows the same area from the south. The horizontal area under the sloped roof structure will be one of the third floor open-air terraces.

I had forgotten that we were going to build a mock-up of the raised floor that will be on the top three floors of the building, to get a sense for how the air, power, and data components will work together. So I was surprised on Tuesday morning to see a couple workmen on the ground floor of the parking structure putting up the steel supports for the floor panels. Friday morning there were three more putting in components of the underfloor HVAC system.

As I understand it, this system works with warmer air and lower air pressures/velocities than overhead systems. Ventilating air moves vertically in the building through very large risers, then horizontally under the floor through “air highways.” These are sheet metal troughs, five feet wide and a foot high, that form a ring around the core of the building and out under the raised floor in the public areas. Finally, the air flows out under the raised floor itself for final distribution. There are also power and data cable distribution systems under the floor, so periodically the air highway floor rises off the slab to provide a “bridge” for the cabling to go underneath.

So, people wanted to see how all of these things coordinated. The raised floor people came in and put down a small section of raised floor, then the sheet metal people came in and ran a short section of air highway with a bridge and a vent (I think these go below the windows around the building perimeter to eliminate condensation). Haven’t seen the power or data people yet. I’m impressed by how sturdy the raised floor seems to be. Didn’t get a chance to walk on it (yet!) but it seems to be very structurally sound.

The final photo shows the area of the light well into the staff areas on the lower level. The west edge of the well is where the ladder is, and the well itself is about 12 feet wide by 75 feet long, open above. There are stairwells for staff use at both the east and west ends of the building, and terraces accessible to staff on the second floor, in this same structural avenue.

Week of January 8 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 06:01:52 PST

The structural steel for the west end of the building is going up relatively quickly. These photos were taken first thing Tuesday morning, after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. As you can see from the first photo, they’re just putting the peaks up for the tower over the main entrance and the roof over the Saint Clare Reading Room, which is on the northwest corner of the third floor. Standing close to the base of all that steel you really begin to realize how BIG this building is. That’s the thing most people I talk to on campus mention.

The second photo is a somewhat closer view of the steel alone. You can see how the floors fit together by looking at the decking: lower level, first, second and third floors. What looks like a fourth floor is actually the roof level for the northern part of the building. This view also gives a better sense for how much higher the ceilings will be in the Saint Clare Room than in the rest of the building.

The perimeter walls in the lower level are all in now (except across the ramp where that crane is going to have to drive out), as you can see in the third photo. In Wednesday’s construction meeting the project manager said that the current steel erection is the first of four stages, and the crane will move as they move to each successive stage.

The last photo shows some footings that were dug into the ground outside the foundation this week. I wasn’t aware that these were going in and was surprised to see them when I sent up in the parking structure to take the first photo. Those represent the area that will be the loading dock and pads for the emergency generator and transformer on the ground level (in a two-story bay) with office space and a terrace off the staff lounge on the third floor.

Week of January 1 2007

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 09:01:45 PST

Structural steel erection has started, and it seems to me to be running pretty fast. I was traveling this whole week and had to content myself with looking at what was happening through the web cams. I took a few peeks a day through Friday, but I still wasn’t prepared for what it looked like when I got to campus Monday morning. These photos were taken early Monday afternoon (dratted meetings!). I was surprised to find that the crane had been moved down onto the slab. Obviously that has to move back to ground level at some point.

There are still parts of the concrete construction for the lower level that aren’t finished (south and east walls, and many of the interior walls on the lower level), but I don’t think it will take them a long time to finish that, once they get started.

The steel erection started on the northwest corner, which is where the café and the Saint Clare Reading Room are located, as well as the main entrance to the building. The diagonal beams in the center of the third photo are part of the east wall of the arcade which will be the outdoor portion of the café. The vertical beams show the height of the top of the Saint Clare Room. I think the floor-to-floor heights for most of the building are 15 feet, but you can get a sense of how much higher the ceiling will be in the Saint Clare Room. You can also see the corrugated steel decking that goes down to form the floors and some of the roof of the building. Later they’ll pour concrete over the decking to actually create the floor.

The fourth photo is a view from the west. My office will be right where the first diagonal beam is in the center of the photo, with a window looking down onto the café rather than directly outside (nothing like being egocentric about the construction J). And, as the fifth photo shows, there are several trucks a day bringing additional steel onsite.

This week also finalized one of the issues around the interim library facilities. We had been worried about moving print materials to and from the ARS during rainy periods. That’s partly why we selected enclosed cabs for the electric vehicles that actually do the moving. We had planned to put awnings over the ramps leading to both the ARS and the Interim Library to protect the materials (that are in plastic bins, as well) while they were being moved to the vehicles, and to have those done by early October to avoid any chance of rain before they were in place. But the City of Santa Clara said that awnings of that size attached to the building needed to have fire sprinklers under the canopy, and the estimated cost to do that was nearly $100,000! Since the awnings will disappear when the Learning Commons opens that seemed like a lot of money for little long-term value. It took three more months to come up with an acceptable alternative solution that didn’t require sprinklers and design it, and it finally got installed this week. The sixth photo shows the awnings at the Interim Library (one over the entrance and a free-standing awning at the bottom of the ramp), and the seventh photo shows the similar arrangement on the east side of the ARS, with one of the electric vehicles.

Week of December 25 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 04:01:13 PST

The big news is we’re ready to start putting up steel! All the columns are poured, the first two batches of structural steel have arrived, and the crane that’s going to be putting them in place is on site. This is a couple weeks later than the original schedule, but the construction manager says that’s not a big deal.

The pictures were taken Saturday December 30. This week’s “View to the South” photo is taken from ground level since I couldn’t get into the Engineering Design Center over the holiday break.

Saturday was the first look I’d had at the construction site since Friday the 22^nd, and they’ve made progress but aren’t as far along as I expected they would be. Half of the wall for the light well has been finished, but the walls on the south end haven’t been framed yet. As you have probably seen in the photos, there’s a dirt ramp on the south side from ground level down to the slab that has been used to move rough-terrain fork lifts and construction materials down there. The ramp runs right through where a wall is supposed to go, so there’s no rebar in place. I don’t know when that wall is actually going to get built.

I was fascinated by the steel. Each piece is annotated, I assume to tell the erection crews where they go, but it’s incomprehensible to me. I didn’t get this good a look at the steel when we built the ARS. The base plates are 3” – 4” thick, holes drilled for the mounting bolts on the columns, and all ready to be matched. An erector set on a grand scale. I know that whenever I try to do something at home, or work on my car, there’s always something that doesn’t quite fit, and I wonder whether that ever happens here – they swing the upright over the column and one of the bolts set into the concrete column is in the wrong place! What would you do? I’ll have to ask our construction manager whether that ever does happen.

I’m traveling this week (in fact, I’m writing this on the plane and will post it when I get to the conference hotel) and won’t get to see the steel going up in person, but you can be the first thing I’ll check when I get the computer set up in my room is the web cams, to see if we’re actually getting stuff up. I hope you enjoy the view too!

Week of December 18 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 04:01:03 PST

Again, not much visible change this week. The shotcreting of the lower level walls continued, with part of the north wall getting finished. They’re still working on pouring some of the columns on the east edge of the lower level, but I think all the other columns are poured, although many of the forms are still up.

The “Northeast Corner” photo is from a lower angle than normal. I didn’t get around to taking photos until late on Friday (which was the last day the university would be open until January 2^nd) and the sun was really low on the horizon, so the shots I took from the third floor of the parking structure had severe sun flare.

A new feature I noted this week is in the third photo. There’s a light well on the north side of the building, to let a little natural light come down to the Technical Services staff, who will have offices and workspace on the north side of the lower level. There’s a higher set of wall forming that you can see where I think that light well is going to be, as well as a taller column that doesn’t have attachments for structural steel. The inner side of that light well will be all glass, and there’s a door that leads out, because we intend to put some plants down there on the floor.

As I mentioned, school closed December 22^nd, but some of us will be coming in to work (it’s amazing how much you can get done when no one else is around). Construction will continue the last week of the year, and I expect to be posting photos to document status at year end.

Week of December 11 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 10:12:52 PST

Another week of lots of work but not much visible change. The construction crew keeps working on pouring the concrete pillars for the lower level, as well as something called “pilasters,” which I had to look up. It’s actually a term from classical architecture but it has a simpler meaning here: “a rectangular column that usually projects about a third of its width from the wall to which it is attached.” That is, a pillar embedded in a wall.

However, when I look at the photos, it seems that all the pillars are attached to walls, so I’ve got to ask how one determines which is which.

You can see that they’ve started on the walls for the lower level. They’re using a technique called “shotcrete” for those walls. They put forms on the outside of the wall only, then blow the concrete up against the form to make the wall, kind of like stucco on steroids. This saves both time and money compared to “cast in place” (which has forms on both sides), two things we are very interested in conserving. The photos show about 150 linear feet completed, all of which was done in a single day.

The last photo shows a closeup of the top of the columns, with the attachments where the structural steel will attach to the building. I found out last Wednesday at the construction meeting that the steel will be going up in “billboard” fashion. They’ll start in the northwest corner and put the steel in for all three above-ground floors before moving to other parts of the building.

They’re using this approach because it means they have to move the crane around less often, which (again) saves time and money. A side benefit for those of you watching construction via the webcams is that you’ll actually be able to see something rising out of the excavation very early in January, and the whole structural frame is supposed to be done by the end of February.

Week of December 4 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 02:12:24 PST

After the excitement of the second slab pour last week, this week was relatively uneventful. There was a short pour for some of the columns in the lower level early in the week (Tuesday, if I remember correctly), and the workers continue to box in columns and the walls for the lower level. You can see what’s been done in the northeast corner view, and more detail in the second photo. Similar work on the eastern portion of the lower level isn’t as far along, as you can see in the third photo. Most of the columns will end up with structural steel on them, and in real life I can see the attachments on top of the columns, but they don’t show up in the photos (maybe I should get a camera with more than a 3X zoom).

One thing I thought was interesting is that they’ve attached a small piece like the tip of a crane to one of the rough-terrain forklifts and are using that to carry around and hoist the forms for the columns and walls, although I wasn’t able to get a clear shot of that.

Pouring for columns and walls will continue through the end of the year on an intermittent basis. We had rain late in the week, and rain is forecast for next week. I don’t think light rain will have a huge impact on the schedule, as long as there are breaks when the concrete pours can take place, but I still worry.

Construction will keep going during the university’s holiday shut-down December 22 through New Year’s Day.

Week of November 27 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 06:12:32 PST

The big event of this week was the second half of the mat slab pour, which happened on Wednesday. You can see the pour in progress in the first photo. The area they’re leveling is going to be the compact shelving vault area for archives and special collections. You can also see more Walker duct in the foreground, and the spaces for the elevator pits, both in the foreground and back against the ARS near where the crew is leveling the concrete. That elevator is restricted access and runs directly from the compact shelving vault to the Fr. Martin Archives and Special Collections Reading Room on the third floor.

This pour finished earlier than the first one, but an interesting aspect of it was that they couldn’t reach all of the area with a concrete pump that sat on the edge of the excavation at ground level. So they drove one down into the pit and set it up on the slab that had been poured a couple weeks earlier, then used a second pump to move concrete down to it, as you can see in the second photo. (My apologies for the poor photo quality, I was shooting into the sun.) I also took the opportunity to take a close-up of the concrete trucks dumping into a third pump that was at ground level at the eastern end of the excavation.

If you look at the second photo you can see the water that was still on the slab from the first pour. The recessed area in the foreground is one of the spaces for compact shelving for reference and government document materials on the lower level of the building.

The next two pictures are the standard end of the week photos to document status, taken on Saturday. The final one is a zoom view of what the next stage will be, pouring columns and support walls, as well as the walls of the foundations. The crews are setting up rebar and attaching forms for what should be a pour sometime next week, as well as others later in the month.

Week of November 13 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 05:11:26 PST

The BIG event this week, of course, was the first mat slab pour, which happened November 15, starting around 7:00 am, which is an hour earlier than the university usually lets construction begin. This pour was for the western part of the foundation, slightly more than half of the total foundation area.

They moved two concrete pumps to the south and west sides of the excavation on Tuesday afternoon. You can see them both in action in the first photo, which was taken just before 8:00 am (I had planned to come in by 7:00 am for the start, but sometimes even the best intentions are overcome by inertia). The second photo was taken from ground level (instead of the top of the parking structure, where the “Northeast Corner” photos are taken) and shows the two concrete trucks that were nestled up to each pump in rotation to keep them stocked with concrete. You can see that the crews hadn’t made much progress at that point.

The concrete trucks, most of them the larger ones with semi tractors and the large concrete drums, were lined up down The Alameda, as the third photo shows. About 8:30 am I counted nine trucks in line (plus four more at the two pumps), and that number stayed pretty constant all day long.

The fourth photo was taken early afternoon. You can see that they’ve made good progress (the line of wooden forms in the foreground marks the east edge of the area to be poured) and are working on leveling and smoothing the concrete (including a guy who seems to be skating on the surface of the slab). They also used small machines that people rode around in to level the surface, which you can see in the next photo. This shot was taken early on Thursday afternoon, and shows most of the slab that was poured this week.

In the foreground of the fifth photo you can see the surface of the slab is slightly lower. That corresponds to the area where the library acquisition staff will be located, and that space will have a low height raised floor to simplify routing data and power cabling. The slab is lower just beyond the leveling machines (a space that will hold reader lounge seating and some computers) for a similar reason.

If you look back at the center of the fourth photo you can see the downspout of a third concrete pump that was brought in on the north side early in the afternoon in to provide easier access for pouring parts of the eastern edge of the slab. Trucks feeding this pump were routed in north of Leavey and Malley, and then went out Sherman Street to the main entrance.

Just before 5:00 pm I was walking back to my office and stopped to look in on the northeast corner of the construction fence. One of the workmen was there directing the trucks in to the pump on the north side, and I asked him how it was going. He complained that they hadn’t gotten as much concrete as they had been promised (they only got 250 cubic yards per hour instead of 320 cubic yards) but he expected they’d be done by 7:00 pm, so 12 hours of continuous work (once they start pouring they can’t stop!).

I was curious about that so I did a few calculations. My house is a fairly typical tract house, about 1600 square feet. If I’m generous and estimate an average height of 12 feet (including the attic), 250 cubic yards per hour would fill my house in about three hours. So SCU filled the equivalent of my house about four times that day.

The final photo shows the eastern edge of the excavation, where they’re still working on installing the rebar (they kept working on that the whole time the pour was going on). Final slab pour is scheduled for November 29. Stay tuned for photos of that!

Week of November 6 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 05:11:58 PST

I was all excited to get back to Santa Clara and run over early Saturday morning to watch the first pour for the mat slab for the building, but just before I got on a plane to come back from Orlando I got an email saying the pour was being postponed until Wednesday November 15 because of the chance of rain Saturday. So I got to sleep later than I otherwise would have Saturday, but there wasn’t much rain at all. Today, however, it rained much of the afternoon, so I hope that stops and we actually get to pour concrete Wednesday.

You can see from the first picture, taken Saturday, that the rebar structure on the west part of the excavation is done and ready to be poured on (I don’t think that’s the correct technical term). The second picture shows that the east portion is not as finished.

The second picture also shows some interesting features of the slab: the shiny silver line running horizontally from the middle of the picture to the right is something called a Walker Duct (I think) that will carry power and data cabling to PCs and microform readers that will be located on the main circulation spine on the lower level. Just above the Walker Duct is a rectangle marked out with boards. That’s a space where some compact shelving for reference and government document materials will be located, and it gets a special, more level surface than the rest of the slab. You can see another one above it near the edge of the excavation. The plywood boxes in the lower center of that second photo mark the elevator pits for the two public elevators and the freight elevator.

I’ll be up early Wednesday to take pictures, and have them up on the blog early next week.

Week of October 30 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 07:11:05 PST

Looking at this week’s photos I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought the construction crews had taken the week off. I was traveling the second half of last week (as I am this week – I’m writing this from Orlando) and when I got to campus Saturday morning and looked at the excavation it took me a little while to realize they actually were making progress.

If you compare with last week’s entry you’ll see there are a few more rebar columns, but the real difference is they are almost done installing the top layer of the rebar sandwich. There’s some steel close to the bottom of what will be the slab, a bunch of stuff running through the middle (including a few conduits and pipes) and then a final layer that will be near the top surface of the slab.

It’s a good thing they are making this much progress, since the first pour for the mat slab is scheduled for this Saturday, November 11. I’m back that day and will try to get some photos to mark this next significant milestone on the path to the Learning Commons and Library.

Week of October 23 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 05:10:29 PST

Not much happening this week in a global sense, but the project is still on schedule. There was an indication on Wednesday at the construction meeting that the structural steel supplier wants to push delivery out later than had been committed, which might push the schedule back by as much as a month. We’re pushing back and I don’t yet know how that’s going to turn out.

There’s now a whole lot more reinforcing steel in the bottom of the excavation, as you can see by some of the photos. The first two photos show a little of that, particularly the second, where you can see the bottom rebar set up off the rat slab by blocks. It’s really interesting watching the construction workers down there. They walk across the rebar, with the ends bouncing up in the air, and don’t seem to worry about it at all. I’d probably be terrified of breaking something, or ruining the alignment.

The third photo shows a little more detail of the reinforcement. You can see that the steel has higher and lower areas, just as the bottom of the excavation did.

The final photo is an example of the effort that goes into avoiding any pollution of water. There’s a drain in the center of that collection of coiled up barriers and sandbags, all of which are intended to keep dirt and other sediment out of the drains.

Week of October 16 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 12:10:54 PST

This was an exciting week, since they started pouring the “rat slab,” a relatively thin three-inch layer of concrete that protects the waterproofing membrane from all the activity that has to go on before we can actually begin to pour the main foundation slab.

There was a concrete pump on site two days, with what looked like a third of the rat slab poured the first day, then leveled, and the rest of the rat slab getting poured on the second day. The first photo shows the pump on the second day here, the waterproofing still being installed on the southeast corner of the excavation, and the finished rat slab on the northwest corner of the excavation. You can also get a really good sense of the changes in thickness for the main slab. The top of the main slab will be pretty much level, but the bottom will have some significant differences in thickness.

The next two photos are the traditional views that I’ve been posting reasonably consistently since construction started. The look from the northeast corner shows the rebar being set up on the rat slab, and the other shows the waterproofing film still waiting to be installed in the southeast portion of the excavation. The big depression in the foreground of the third photo will be the elevator pit when the building is completed.

The fourth photo shows some of the rebar elements stacked on the edge of the excavation. There are some pre-built rectangular sections that I think get used to form columns (have to verify that) and the straight pieces go down on the bottom of the foundation, raised off the rat slab by what look like Styrofoam cubes to me.

The last photo shows some of the wooden forms that are going up around the perimeter of the building that will form the edges of the slab.

We’ve also put up another webcam that’s a lot closer to the construction. It’s mounted above the second floor balcony on the Graham 400 building. You can access it directly at http://www.scu.edu/webcams/library.cfm?display=4, or link to it from the New Library web site (http://www.scu.edu/newlibrary/). Right now it doesn’t show much, since it can’t get an angle down into the excavation, but once the structural steel starts going up in about two months it will have a much better closeup view of the action.

Week of October 9 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 05:10:26 PST

I was away at Educause most of this week and had to content myself with periodic peeks at the webcam (if the speaker was boring enough, and my battery had enough juice,…). Still, I was surprised by how smoothly the gravel that will be under the foundation slab had been laid when I looked at the site in person Friday afternoon.

The first photo shows how neatly the thicker areas of the slab have been outlined, with nice 45° edges. Thickening the slab at some points allows provides additional structural support. For example, by increasing slab thickness the architects were able to delete a brace frame in the lower level that would have taken up a lot of potential stack space. I think the white stuff is part of the waterproofing system I wrote about last week, but I have to verify that during this week’s construction meeting. You can also see that the pile of dirt that was still there at the end of last week is now gone.

The second photo is there mostly to provide week-to-week continuity, but the third photo shows some of the detail of how the perimeter dewatering piping is being laid around the foundation of the building, and gives a closer view at some of the variations in height of the dirt that will be under the slab.

Week of October 2 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 11:10:00 PST

Well, Friday morning answered a question I’d had all week. The construction crew had been shoving dirt out of the excavation using a big front loader that was slipping and sliding up a pretty step slope to dump a bucket full of dirt on the ground, where a D4 Cat would push it up to the top of a mound of dirt that was growing higher and higher, as you can see in the first photo. But Friday as I drove in to work there was a line of about half a dozen semi trucks waiting to be filled up with the dirt, and they kept shuttling all day long. However, I didn’t notice a lot of difference in the height of the mound at the end of Friday compared to the beginning.

The crews are starting to lay the perimeter drainage pipes for the building. You can see some of the pipes waiting to be installed in the second photo. When they’re put in place the crew is putting what looks like black plastic sheeting underneath them.

The waterproofing system is actually three different components. The first is the set of permanent dewatering wells that are already drilled and pumping over 550 gallons per minute now (that’s keeping the water level down low enough that we can excavate for the foundation). They’re supposed to keep the water level so low on a permanent basis that water doesn’t get near the building.

If there’s so much water the wells can’t keep the level down there’s a second level of defense (to work while we dig more dewatering wells!). There’s going to be a layer of rock under the foundation for the whole building. The idea is that any water that gets pushed up from the underground aquifer will enter the rock layer and migrate down a slight slope to the edge of the building, enter the pipes, and get pumped out.

If that still isn’t enough to keep water away from the building, the third component is a double-barrier waterproofing system that’s being installed under the foundation and on the outer walls of the lower level of the building.

None of that kind of planning went into the construction of the Orradre building and it leaked frequently. We don’t expect any similar problems with the Learning Commons.

In the third photo you can see the perimeter pipes a little more clearly, where they’re following the outline of the stepped part of the building that faces the southwest.

I’m traveling next week through Thursday, so I’m going to have to get my periodic construction fix through the web cam. And I know I’m going to rush over first thing Friday morning to see what’s happened while I was gone.

Week of September 26 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 01:10:43 PST

It rained Sunday! This is not good news, folks. We want a dry winter to minimize construction delays due to weather, and having rain the beginning of October (and forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday, as well), even if it was only a tenth of an inch, is not an auspicious start.

Excavation is down as far as it has to go across most of the area for the new building, and they’re leveling it out in preparation for starting the foundation, as you can see in the first photo. In the second photo (just above the small shed in the lower left-center) you can see that the construction crews are starting to dig out some of the areas where the slab is thicker. They should start bringing in rock later this week to provide drainage under the foundation, so any water that seeps up from below will run laterally to the perimeter of the building, where there will be perforated pipes to collect the water and pump it away from the building.

It’s hard to see in the first photo, but there was standing water in the bottom of the hole near the northwest corner on Sunday when the pictures were taken. Not a lot, but that’s the area where ground water is closest to the floor of the excavation. It was gone Monday morning, but I’m still nervous.

Week of September 18 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 06:09:21 PST

The pictures this week look a lot like last week but, trust me, the hole is a lot deeper than a week ago. In fact, they’re getting deep enough that the moisture content of the soil is increasing, as indicated by the much darker color. You can see the contrast in soil color more clearly in the second picture. Ground water is a foot or two closer to the surface near the northwest corner, and deepest near the southeast corner. The first photo shows standing water in the bottom of the excavation, but I think that’s from the water drills they use to bore anchors for the excavation shoring, not from ground water seepage. I’ll verify that at Wednesday’s construction meeting.

One of the things that surprises me is how much they seem to be moving dirt around in the hole, rather than just trucking it out. It seems I’ll go by one day and there’s a shovel sitting on a mound of dirt, scooping up soil and loading it into a truck. Then a couple days later I stop to take a look and the same shovel is on an equally high pile of dirt somewhere else in the excavation. I’m sure there’s a reason, but I don’t know what it is.

I’ve also wondered for weeks what they were going to do with the crane that has been on site since demolition started. They used it during demolition of the first and second floors but didn’t use it at all for the basement walls. You can see it just sitting near the site entrance in the first photo from last week. I assumed they would use it to break up the basement floor, but I don’t think they did. Now it’s gone. I wonder if it’s just easier (or cheaper) to store it here until they need it somewhere else.

Excavation around the ARS has exposed the waterproofing sheets around the lower level of the ARS. That’s not a problem as long as it doesn’t rain, but we had a small leak when the ARS was first opened that came from water flowing over the waterproofing and down between it and the concrete. That hasn’t recurred, and it’s very unlikely that it would rain hard enough for significant amounts of water to run down the concrete, but books and water aren’t a good combination. The Devcon project manager raised the issue last Wednesday and will check on whether there’s a potential problem.

The last photo shows how they continue to add shoring as the excavation gets deeper. This is a short towards the north and shows the machine they use to bore the anchors for the shoring.

Week of September 11 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 10:09:26 PST

The concrete is gone and we’re down to the dirt!

Big event – all of the Orradre building is demolished and the construction crews are working full speed on the excavation. Estimated completion date is October 2. The crews worked hard all week, and into the weekend. You can see from the first photo that there have been a lot of trucks constantly shuttling in and out. At times the line of waiting trucks reached out the gate and down the Alameda.

The first part of the week was a continuation of the past weeks, chopping up and sifting through concrete from Orradre’s foundation. But by mid-week the foundation was gone and they concentrated on the excavation. They’ve brought in a bulldozer to push dirt around in the hole.

You can see from the second shot that they were very careful with the excavation near the foundation for the ARS, so I guess I can stop worrying now.

It doesn’t look too wet from the locations I was able to get a view, but ground water levels continue to be a concern. There was a crew installing a temporary well in the excavation near the ARS on Friday to remove even more water during the construction period, but it won’t be needed once the building is actually operating, as opposed to the other wells that will be running permanently.

Friday and Saturday were the last two orientation sessions for new freshmen, and Saturday and Sunday were move-in days for returning students who will be living in the residence halls. It was pretty funny watching all those people peering through the fence and asking all kinds of questions about what was going on.

Week of September 4 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 02:09:29 PST

Week of September 4 2006

Week of August 28 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 09:09:36 PST

Week of August 28 2006

Week of August 21 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 11:08:04 PST

Week of August 21 2006

Week of August 14 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 01:08:04 PST

Week of August 14 2006

July 31 to August 13 2006

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 05:08:50 PST

Weeks of July 31 and August 7, 2006

Week of July 24

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 08:08:48 PST

Update for week of July 24 2006

Week of July 17

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 08:08:53 PST

July 17 2006 Update

Week of July 10

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 10:08:13 PST

July 10 2006 Update

Week of July 3

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 09:08:52 PST

July 3 2006 weekly update

The Week of June 26

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 04:08:55 PST

The week of June 26 was a tale of two sites.

In the Interim library, staff were working emptying book trucks and placing reference materials on the shelves. Current periodicals, the Archives, and Special Collections were still being moved from Orradre to the Interim Library, a project that would take much of the week.

In Orradre, furnishings that remained in the building were being moved into Boland Reading Room and placed in three collections: things that were being stored and would eventually be used in the Nobili Hall interim facility, things that would be moved to off-site storage for the duration of the two-year construction period and would then be used in the new library, and things that we didn’t have any use for.

On the second floor, workers were knocking down the shelving that had held the bound periodicals. That was an amazingly noisy and completely brute force process. The shelving didn’t meet current earthquake standards and couldn’t be sold to another library, so it was being recycled as scrap steel. Shelves came out first, then the uprights and horizontal earthquake bracing. Walking through the library began to feel a little eerie, as spaces that had been filled with shelving opened up, leaving tables and carrels sitting alone.

To move the old shelving out as quickly as possible, workers knocked out some of the windows, moved dump boxes under the windows, and used big plastic bins to cart refuse around the second floor and over to the windows, where they were dumped into the waste boxes. Everything went – shelving first, then carpeting (when the carpeting got pulled up the adhesive was still very sticky, so my shoes made sucking sounds as I walked around). By Friday, the second floor was empty and ready for asbestos abatement, which was scheduled to start on July 3, and work had begun on demolishing the shelving in the basement.

The week of June 19

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 03:08:55 PST

The week of June 19 was a really hectic week for library staff, and we all discovered how much clear plastic wrap is required to complete a modern move. We only had three days to move furnishings, reference materials, and current periodicals from Orradre to the Interim Library if we were going to make our goal of opening for service on the first day of summer session.

All the furnishings that were going into the modular trailers had been labeled during the previous weeks but were still in place in Orradre. As the movers started carting tables, chairs, microform cabinets, and even the Orradre circulation desk over to the interim library, staff got busy moving reference materials from shelves in Orradre’s Information Commons onto book trucks. There were a lot of shuttle trips back and forth from Orradre’s loading dock to the Interim Library, with a constant stream of people and material flowing back and forth. By 5:00 pm on the 20^th, the Interim Library started to look pretty good, the reference materials were all on book trucks and wrapped, and we began to think everything might work out. Wednesday morning started the move of book trucks, but we all had a shock when one of our movers broke his leg. Still, by late afternoon on the 21^st, almost everything that was needed in the public areas of the Interim Library was in the modular structure.

That’s when we were told that, because asbestos abatement would probably take longer than had originally been estimated, all the library staff that were expecting to move to the second floor of Leavey Events Center the week of June 26 would have to be out of Orradre by Friday afternoon June 23! Instead of shelving reference materials, everyone got busy packing their offices into boxes, without the careful sorting they had planned to do but just as rapidly as they could.

The Interim Library opened on schedule June 22, but there were wrapped book trucks everywhere, some computers that hadn’t survived the move in working order, and a bit of confusion in general. That didn’t seem to bother the students – some were in there working on computers even though there was hardly enough room to push a chair back to squeeze in front of a screen.

By Friday afternoon all the staff were out of Orradre, and workers were on the second floor demolishing the bookshelves.

Switch of library services

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 06:16:00 PST

The first of the interim library locations, the modular structure located northeast of the parking structure, is now officially open for business. Pickup of materials requested from the ARS, checkout and return of library materials, paper reserves, reference services and materials, and current periodicals will be in this location. I've attached a campus map showing the location of the interim facility, as well as a block diagram of the internal layout.

We're still in the process of moving reference and current periodical collections, so "pardon our dust." Some unanticipated changes to the fire sprinkler system were required before the city issued our occupancy permit, which affected an already tight schedule.

All library staff will be moved out of Orradre Library by 5:00 pm Friday June 23, either to the modular structure or to the second floor of Leavey Events Center. Asbestos abatement procedures in the Orradre Library building will begin immediately and continue for several weeks. Actual demolition of Orradre is tentatively scheduled to begin the week of July 24. We'll keep the campus informed of the date through the "General" and "Event" mailing lists.

We're excited to have taken one more step toward realization of the new Commons and Library, and are committed to providing the best service we possibly can during the interim period. If you've got questions or comments I'd be happy to talk to you.

The Time up to June 16

rdanielson@scu.edu (Ron Danielson) — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 05:07:33 PST

This is the first in what I intend to be weekly postings with pictures of the demolition of Orradre Library and the construction of Santa Clara's new Learning Commons and Library.

The period from February to early June 2006 was a hectic period for Orradre staff, with almost everyone involved in moving all our collections from Orradre to the Automated Retrieval System (ARS), where they'll reside during the two year construction period of the new building.

June 16, the last day of Spring quarter, was the last day of operation for Orradre, but there had already been significant changes in the way the building looked from the inside. Stacks that had once been overflowing with books had been emptied and moved to the ARS leaving the building with a sort of hollow feel.

The primary facility for interim services, a modular structure built from 20 12 foot wide by 60 foot long trailers, was set up and was being rushed to readiness for staff, reference and current periodical collections, and furnishings to move in (the pictures were early in the week).

Orradre's doors closed to the public at 6:00 pm on June 16, 2006. While we'd prepared for the forthcoming move for months, the intensity of what was coming surprised all of us.