Life Science Building combines form and function
By Nathan J. King, May 2009
Staff Writer
The $12.5 million Life Science Building is on schedule for completion May 20, a little over a year after its groundbreaking ceremony.
The crowning highlight of the project will be the four externally exposed teaching pods on the east side of the building’s second floor. The outdoor classrooms will have glass walls and a chalk blackboard on the south side of the interior.
All corridors in the building will feature an 8-inch, heavy, ground exposed aggregate. The floor covering, after being polished, will resemble “Terrazzo, but at about half the price,” said Brian Hatvich, the project engineer for PVCC’s contracted project manager, Barton Mallow.
The expense of the concrete is estimated at $70,000. “We had a three-hour meeting and were probably spending $10,000 an hour (discussing the layout of the concrete), for people’s paychecks, sitting in there,” said Hatvich. A quarter million dollars is being spent on 3,000 pounds of copper.
 |
Photo by Nathan J. King
Biology landscaping surrounds four lower-level learning "pods," promoting "form and function" in the new Life Science Building. |
The two water features on the building will be unique to any other project that Barton Mallow has worked on. With no drains on the roof, the two roof slopes are directed to the south and west stairwells. On the west side, the stairs will wrap around the water feature. Rainwater will travel down the water feature, hit internal u-channels, spill out the sides and run down into stone pools, said Hatvich.
From there the water will run down 12- to15-inches of polyethylene piping into a 10-foot in diameter bellow ground retention tank, which ties into a drywell that is 45-feet deep with an overflow that is connected to a secondary tank that is 140-feet deep.
Unlike all of the other buildings on campus, this building will be backed up by a Cummings generator for emergency power capability. The transformer will also be upgraded to be able to handle a new building at a later date and time.
“This college is going to be set up, so that if one building looses power, no matter which one, the rest of them will be just fine,” said Hatvich.
The east side of the building will have a stepped out grade graduating from ground-level to one-foot, to two-feet and to three-feet between four building structures. The biology landscaping encompassing the four structures will also “support form and function” for future students.
The faculty meeting area on the second story is the only part of the building with a depressed slab and will have an ample view of the tennis courts, the track field and the baseball field. This area will be cooled by two fans, eight-feet in diameter, made by Big Ass Fans.
To be more Earth friendly, fewer windows will be used. Only two port windows will be installed on the south side of the building, leaving the exposed areas on the north and east side of the building to be walled in glass at the corners of the building.
The building will be the third project that Barton Mallow has contracted with Maricopa County Community Colleges and the Barton Mallow’s first project with architect Marlene Imirzian and Associates.
With 25 sub-contractors on site, BM has a ‘corporate procurement system that grades (sub-contractor’s) based on past performance, safety, insurance risk and financial information.
According to Hatvich, “If I got everybody in the $2,000 range, and some guy is bidding 10 percent lower, he’s missed something, in which case we won’t put them on the job because in the long term they will cost us more money.”
Triad Steel is responsible for the structural steel portion of the building. The medium bronze, perforated plate running against the railings of the building along with the fascia metal (copper panels) and break metal, will be installed by Kovach Steel.
|
