Project superintendent Steve Massa of Story Construction (right), explains the features of a third floor flex lab to graduating industrial and manufacturing systems engineering seniors during a tour of the Therkildsen Industrial Engineering Building Wednesday afternoon. Photos by Christopher Gannon.
As part of the last class session during their last semester as industrial and manufacturing systems engineering (IMSE) undergraduates, students in teaching professor David Sly's capstone course section received a special tour Wednesday afternoon of the nearly completed Therkildsen Industrial Engineering Building. Nearly all class members are graduating this week, but this was no farewell tour; rather, one more learning opportunity for this group of young engineers.
Project superintendent Steve Massa of Story Construction and ISU construction manager Danelda Allen took time to, for example, show off the fourth-floor mechanical room and explain how the air handling system was lifted into place by crane in six wrapped pieces -- the largest weighed 22,000 pounds -- and protected until the structure was enclosed and the system could be assembled. Or to explain how the project job board works, what all those colored notes mean and how the team relies on daily communication to juggle all the variables in any project and keep the work on schedule. Or to point out the modern features in the capstone lab, the high bay labs or the flex lab -- stuff like lights that self-regulate in response to available daylight or the appropriate flooring for the activities in each lab.
For Allen, herself an alumna of the IMSE department, the tour was special, too. In her seven years as a construction manager on campus, she's coordinated some big projects -- a multi-summer effort to replace 2,000+ windows in Friley residence hall was one -- but Therkildsen is the lone new building project she'll oversee from start to finish. She expects to retire before spring arrives.
Office furniture gets ordered by the end of the month, the "punch list" small projects and corrections should be done by mid-January and the information technology team will arrive to install all sorts of communication and design technology.
"It's a good feeling" to have been the construction guardian of her old department's new facility, she said.
Construction manager Danelda Allen (left), explains a second-floor area to students touring the Therkildsen Industrial Engineering Building Wednesday.
Students investigate in the third-floor high bay lab at Therkildsen Industrial Engineering Building.
