Construction Blog

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.