With more than 40 building projects planned at NC State over the next several years, there is no doubt that employees will find their work schedules and travel habits inconvenienced and disrupted at times.

However, Charles Leffler, associate vice chancellor for facilities, told a group of several hundred people gathered at Witherspoon Cinema for a special Staff Senate meeting on Wednesday that the university is taking several steps to make sure that the negative impact of construction is kept to a minimum.

One of those steps is to do the most disruptive work during the least disruptive time.

"Whenever we have to close off a street completely for a considerable amount of time, for example, we want to do it during the summer," Leffler said. "If it involves closing half of a street, we might be able to do that during the standard academic year."

Another step is the Flex Research Building, which the university is building to use for swing space as existing buildings are renovated.

"There will be great upheaval for many of these departments," Leffler said. "A lot of research programs will literally have to pick up everything they own and move it once, maybe twice over the course of the next few years.
"Rotating people out into the swing space is an important part of our planning - who do we move, for how long. We're sharing this information with the various colleges to get their reactions and input and make sure we don't miss their needs, because it's crucial to keep them functioning during these moves."

A final crucial step, Leffler said, was simply letting people know in advance what's about to take place.

"It's terribly important for us to keep the campus informed, to make sure we know how we're impacting the campus and try to adjust for that," Leffler said. "We're doing that through a number of ways - the Bulletin, the Technician, job-site signs, e-mail notifications, our general Web site, www.ncsu.edu/facilities.
"We're trying to provide information on what will happen at the construction site, what are the accessible pathways around that site if the path is interrupted, what will be off limits, what lots will be closed to parking, etc."

Posted November 8, 2002

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