As the College prepares to close for the holiday season, the new campus is starting to look pretty interesting. Some of the roof line details are starting to be visible. We'll have lots of light in our new quarters, thanks to careful use of windows in high places. Staff who have gone on site tours come back oohing and ahhing about how big the space feels and how nice it will be to move out of our current structure. (The roof was leaking again this week, sigh.) The shop wing is closed in now, shingling has started on the roof of the academic wing, and trusses are still being assembled for the student commons area.

Trades Building Looking Massive

As promised, the trades wing has gone up really quickly. In just one week, it has started to look solid and massive. The size of the shops -- with double height and more floor space than the current ones-- is starting to be visible and the carpentry and masonry faculty are getting excited about the possibilities for new projects our current facility won't accommodate.

Trades building girders going up

Yesterday was spent unloading the convoy of transports that delivered the wall system for the trades building. Today they got to work putting up the girders outlining the hallway and the shops.

Shop Walls are Here

A grey Monday morning doesn't usually get people excited, especially during exam week, but I was pretty excited when I arrived at work this morning and saw the convoy of transports waiting to drop off all of the materials for the wall system for our new trades wing. This is a pre-engineered system that is expected to be assembled over the course of this week.

Raising the Roof

The crew has been assembling the trusses into roof units, on the ground, inside the frame of the building, for the last week. Today the crane pulled up at about 11:00 a.m. and work started not long after to put the sections in place. The building started to take on its final shape by afternoon. They're going to have to keep up a brisk pace to get it all in place before the heavy snowstorm predicted for the weekend snows them in.

Trusses have been delivered

Signs of the next stage of construction are evident this week. Truckloads of rafters for the main campus building roof have been arriving over the past few days. The plan is to construct roof sections on the ground, and then bring in a crane to install them. If the weather holds out, the plan is to have the roof shingled by the beginning of the new year.