The steel is up, the floors are being poured, and despite several snowstorms, the Tanner Building Addition is on schedule for completion next fall.
Richard Dalebout, associate professor of business law and building committee chair, says the addition should be finished in July 2008, with students in classrooms and roaming the hallways by fall semester.
With the steel skeleton nearing completion, the building is about to get its thick metal, glass, and stone skin. Kip Walter, Tanner Addition project manager for Jacobsen Construction, says the workers will be putting up exterior glass, paneling, and stone during the next several months. They will continue with the interior’s mechanical, electrical, and framing projects and will begin to paint the interior and install the elevators in March.
Initially, the construction focused on the four-story atrium that will connect the existing building with the addition. Now, work has moved west. “The cranes were not big enough to easily reach the atrium between the two buildings if construction on the addition was any further west,” Dalebout explains. “Thus, the heavy work on the east end was finished before that on the west end.”
Walter says he has about fifty-five people working on the project each day, but that’s expected to increase once work on the interior begins.
During the winter months there are special considerations. “The rain and snow make the site a mud pit. You can’t weld in cold weather either,” Walter says. “We’ve hung plastic sheets to heat the building. It needs to be warm to hang drywall and to paint, and it has to be at least 40 degrees to fireproof the steel.”
Next to the addition, construction on the parking structure is well underway. The above-ground structure should be completed around April 2008. Although parking is particularly scarce this year with construction on both the Richards and Tanner buildings, there is hope ahead. “If you count all the parking spots lost because of these two construction projects and the new entrance to the Tanner Building parking lot, we should get all those back in the new parking structure plus sixty-six additional spots,” Dalebout says with a smile.
You can keep tabs on the Tanner Addition construction by visiting marriottschool.byu.edu for a live video feed.
