Yes, you may have heard by now that our new Lecture Hall Building (a.k.a.: Purce Hall) won’t be fully completed by the start of the fall quarter. If it is not one thing it is another lately. I feel terrible because I was so confident things would work out and we could get the teaching and learning process going in these new spaces as originally planned.

Our current revised (seemingly revised again, and again) schedule puts us at getting the building official to do a inspection on this Friday, September 16th. This will be the start of our final building inspections. Final cleaning of the building is currently scheduled for completion on September 20th. The Final FINAL inspection for obtaining our Certificate of Occupancy is scheduled for September 23rd. Unfortunately at that point work will not be compete to fully use the building as intended.

The one issue that is driving the schedule for us in using the building for it’s high performing pedagogical experience is regarding audio / visual (A/V) capabilities. We had a very skookum A/V system designed for the lecture hall spaces. The bids received for this system were very high and beyond our modest budget, so we worked on revising the design with the contractor and some of our staff who have expertise in this realm. We went back and forth for a while figuring out how to get this built without it costing an arm and leg. If I compare it to makes and models of cars, we had a Porsche Cayenne chosen for us, when a Toyota Prius would really suit us just fine; just don’t include the $3,000 sunroof and backup camera on our package. Anyway, the going back and forth on this subject took so long that we were told recently that a completed A/V system would not be possible by the time school is scheduled to start. I’m guessing that most of our faculty members are not Amish and will likely need a fully functioning A/V system to effectively teach to our grand student body. Some of the A/V equipment will take a while to get here and once it is here it will take some time to make all the connections and perform testing of the equipment to ensure it is working properly. Anyhow, as of now it appears we should be able to start fully utilizing all the new classroom environments in Purce Hall starting October 17th.

A contingency plan has been in the works and it appears we should be able to shuffle some classes around to various spaces in the interim. Keep your fingers crossed so that we don’t have any other delays! Nobody here needs that added stress.

That is all for now.

Cheers!

Tim

Timothy Byrne

Project Manager

Facilities Services

The Evergreen State College

360-867-6093