March 5, 2009
PACCAR Hall construction on time, on schedule despite winter weather
Construction on PACCAR Hall, the first of two new buildings coming to the Michael G. Foster School of Business, is on schedule and on budget, despite the challenges presented by unruly winter weather.
“We’re 10 percent through construction — we started construction about Oct. 1 — and we expect to finish on June 28, 2010,” said Bob Dillon, construction manager in the UW Capital Projects Office, who is in charge of the project. The contractor for the work is Seattle-based Sellen Constuction.
“We’re on schedule — the construction has gone extremely well in the early stages, the excavations and beginning of the foundations. It’s a difficult part of the project but it has gone very well,” Dillon said.
PACCAR Hall is one of two buildings to be built by the School of Business, and was named so in recognition of an $18 million gift from PACCAR and the Pigott Family. The 135,000-square-foot building will hold classrooms, faculty offices, student lounges, a boardroom and a 250-seat auditorium. The second building is planned for 2012. Both will be environmentally sound buildings designed to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.
Dillon explained that there are three levels, or tiers, to the excavation stage of the project, and that the contractor used a 3-D drawing to guide his work and show how parts relate to the whole. “You excavate, then install site piping and then you dig the next tier, then install the third tier, and then you begin the foundation,” he said.
“We are now engaged in 100 percent of the foundation — we’re working actively on all of the foundations,” Dillon said. “On its south side, the foundation is 25 feet deep, and on the north side it is at grade.
“Of course you remember that it rained hard on us and snowed hard on us” through much of the work, Dillon said, “but the scheduling effort was really good — we worked right through the bad weather.”
He added, “The contractor came out swinging after Christmas and they have done a great job of continuing to move the foundation along.”
Dillon said that the president of Sellen Construction is a UW Business School graduate. “It’s close to his heart, what we are doing,” he said.
