Tim Wynn's latest "Desk Notes" previews summer construction on campus

Charles Dickens opens his classic "A Tale of Two Cities" with the lines: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” This summer Western will experience an unprecedented amount of construction work. As I type my notes, I have counted a total of over 70 projects that are already either awarded to construction contractors or scheduled for Facilities Management execution.

There are another possible 40 projects ‘in the pipe’ for execution although some of those will have to be ‘pushed’ into the academic year or held over to a break or next summer. Needless to say that amount of construction will have a significant impact on the campus.

Virtually every academic building will have a project in it or near it. Some of those projects will be short lived and some will last the entire summer. But which will be which and how will the effected individuals find out more? Facilities Management is working hard to put up an interactive campus map that will detail the specific projects that will be executed in each building. Look for this map by the end of May. I will send out another Desk Note to communicate the link to the map and also to update the project count.

One question that you are probably asking yourself (other than ‘is he nuts?’) is ‘why?’ Why are we having so much construction activity this summer? Western Washington University was extremely successful in gaining capital funds from the state for the 2009-2011 biennium. It was determined that the best way to insure that those funds would not be ‘swept’ by the state was to have them all spent by 30 June 2011. Since the classroom environment is a top priority, this has meant that we are going to have to try and execute all the impacting projects during the one full summer of the biennium…this summer. So hold on to your hats because it is going to get interesting.

What are some of the impacts that you can expect other than noise, dust, smell, and the sound of project managers beating their heads against deadlines? Well, for one, the campus is going to have a lot of mobilization areas in and around the buildings. A mobilization area is an area that the contractor is allowed to use to store his materials and equipment. Another impact will be utility outages. With that many contractors doing multiple things in multiple buildings coordination of outages will be challenging to say the least. We will be doing our best to communicate the impact to the effected buildings but you can help by reading the notification prior to deleting it or sending it to the SPAM file.

Another impact will be a decrease of response in reactive maintenance. Most of FM personnel will be trying to help execute this huge project workload. That means the relatively few remaining maintenance personnel will be trying to cover all the normal repair workload. So, if a repair doesn’t seem absolutely critical, it may wait a few days longer than normal. Another impact will be the unlikelihood of executing any last minute projects. If you don’t have a project already approved, estimated, and scheduled, it will be very unlikely that it will be executed this summer.

Look for more information shortly on the summer workload. Oh, back to the opening quote from Charles Dickens, you are probably wondering why I mentioned, ‘the best of times.’ Well, everyone has a weakness and mine is construction (not to mention Tequila and chocolate chip cookies) so it is going to be a great summer from my perspective.

 

Goodnight Western,

-Tim