Delays in material delivery have caused the university to postpone the reopening of the Colvard Student Union to next semester, MSU President Robert ‘Doc’ Foglesong said in a university relations news release.This is the second time the university has announced a delay in the process since renovation began on the building last fall.
“Sometime during the day Tuesday, we were notified that there were material supply delivery problems that might impact the Union opening,” MSU executive director of facilities Jim Jones said. “When you hear those things, the first thing you do is to begin to try to gather information and find out what’s really going on.”
West Brothers Construction, the construction company hired to renovate the building, found out about the setback last month.
According to West Brothers project superintendent James Shackelford, D & J Architectural Precast, a manufacturer of reinforced concrete, relayed to them that they would not be able to produce the necessary material by the projected Nov. 1 opening date.
“We had a commitment from the company to get the remaining pieces needed by mid-November,” Shackelford said. “After that, they still have to be installed, so that’s additional time required to get them in place on the building.”
Shackelford said only a few companies in the country make reinforced concrete, and that university architects made the decision to have that type of concrete.
“We don’t choose anything,” he said. “It’s all chosen by the architects that designed [the building].”
Jones said if one item gets delayed on the “critical path” of any major construction project, it can set back the entire project.
“As you get closer to the end of a construction project, more items become a part of that critical path because everything has to get done, and it has to all come together,” he said. “It’s that last 5 percent that is the most difficult to get to in pretty much every construction project,” he said.
Once the concrete comes in, it will go around the exterior of the building and around each main entrance, Shackelford said.
Another contributing factor, according to Shackelford, was that West Brothers previously hired another architecture company to supply the concrete.
West Brothers had originally hired Stromburg Architectural Products out of Dallas, Texas at the beginning of the renovation process to supply them with the concrete, but the company did not produce a product after three months of limbo.
“After trying to deal with them for three months, it became very obvious that they couldn’t produce the product,” he said.
West Brothers fired Stromburg from the project on the fourth month and hired D & J soon thereafter.
Shackelford said West Brothers’ construction contract with the Mississippi Bureau of Buildings runs through Dec. 22.
Also contributing to the delay was the university’s decision to hire Aramark to take over dining services.
West Brothers was building to suit to plans the university made before Aramark forced the construction company to make alterations to the plans midway through the project, Shackelford said.
Despite the delay, certain areas of the building are nearly finished, he said. The third floor is almost complete.
“We don’t want to throw stones at the university,” Shackelford said. “Throwing stones wouldn’t get you in the building a day sooner.”
Jones said the delay will be worth the wait.
“When I was a student here … the Union was exactly the way it was when I came back here in 2004,” he said. “I’m really excited that we are getting close to the end of a two-year construction process, and we’re going to have a Union that is better designed to meet the needs of the students today.”
Foglesong was unavailable for comment as of press time, but said in the release that the university “…made a decision that a $30-per-semester student fee assessed for the renovation project would be refunded to students this semester.”
“Our hope is that Colvard Student Union will be up and running by the time our students return to campus for the spring semester,” he said in the release.