Update on proposed PSL and Engineering merger, week ending 7th August 2009

The Monday meeting this week concentrated on the project work to move book stock that will take place in the three weeks starting from the 24th August. Theresa is busy organising the leasing of additional crates and obtaining a rental truck and Dawn has contacted Student Job Search to place an advertisement for five students to assist with moving stock in this time period.

Dawn has been communicating with academic staff in Engineering and Physical Sciences to ensure that they are up to date with the proposal. The weeding programme in the Engineering collections is continuing and a book sale of items withdrawn, mostly duplicate copies, from the these collection started this week.

The first stock moves for the project took place on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Dave Lane, Anne Milligan and Jenny Fitzgerald formed a team to move the S-T journal backrun from Central Library to storage in the Law Basement. As well Engineering materials from Central Library were moved to the Engineering Library. Congratulations to this team for a job well done.

On Thursday prior to the Project Control Group meeting Dawn, Theresa and I met with the University Architect and the Programmer. The purpose of this meeting was to ensure that the Programmer was aware of the many different activities that need to go on for this project to be successful. There are a number of stock moves and stack moves that need to take place, plus moving furniture out of areas to allow space for the workers to be able to carry out their tasks. All the information about infilling ceiling tiles, replacing the lighting, removing the convector heaters and replacing them, providing mechanical ventilation etc., for Phase 1 of this project is to be fed into a computer programme and this will then generate the workflows for the project. We will then know what the timeline is for the project, and if it is feasible. It was also noted at this meeting that Phase 2 of the project will be undertaken in 18 months.

The Project Control Group meeting this week looked at some items in detail, e.g. the convector heaters are now being removed and replaced in Phase 1 of the project, not in Phase 2 as per the original plans. With the increase in the number of study spaces and therefore an increase in the number of people in the Library, a sustainable model for ventilation has to be re looked at. The Architect will redraft the plans this week and the plans will then be resubmitted to the Quantity Surveyor, and the cashflow options will be looked at again. The ICTS representatives at the meeting discussed the options that have been made available for a teaching space/s after the closing of the Cave. They also asked that the Cave be closed ad relocated during the second semester break. One option that ICTS is looking at using the room on Level 4 of the Central Library to house some computers.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *