The Big Dig

I just looked at the live shot of the construction site (http://www.sohe.wisc.edu/) and the hole gets deeper by the day. It's really pretty cool to think in just a few months how much and how fast the work has been done.

The mass excavation started on May 3 and will take about 25-30 working days to complete. According to our campus project manager, Angela Pakes Ahlman, the contractor should be able fill about 12 trucks per hour, or about 120 per day. Yowza!

Because I am a visual learner (and my office sits in Mechanical Engineering, facing Camp Randall) I was curious...just how much dirt are we talking about?

Well, each truck will carry ~15 cubic yards (cy) of dirt.

So 15x120 = 1,800 cy/day x ~25 days = 45,000 cy dirt or ~1,215,000 cubic feet of solid dirt.

That’s not Camp Randall, it’s about 22.5% of the Kohl Center or roughly 303,750,000 hockey pucks!

Go Badgers!

I remember!

True confession time. Each morning on my drive in to work I think about the building blog and what's new, what might be interesting to a larger audience. Ideas range from how big the hole is we are digging for the addition to stories from the groundbreaking on April 30 to the next neighborhood meeting. There is a lot of activity - and yet by the time I pull in to the parking ramp the ideas evaporate.

But not today. Today I held on long enough to reach my desk and put virtual pen to paper.

First up: Results of the Chair Fair
I will be the first to say it, the chair fair was a success. The event was held from April 19-23 at Sterling and third floor of Middleton. The furniture at Sterling included chairs like the one to the left (Steelcase: Sidewalk) that are under consideration for Centers reception area, to chairs for the green roof (the black one to the right is Janus et Cie 'Forest') to classroom chairs. It makes such a huge difference to actually sit in a chair - and run my hands over the buttery smooth leather - as opposed to seeing it in a showroom or online. When we went to the Merchandise Mart last summer we were on such a rapid, tight schedule that it was sometimes difficult to fully appreciate a piece of furniture. But this way lots of people had the chance to weigh in on likes and dislikes. I adore the Janus chair and was really surprised at how accommodating and comfortable it was for my, shall we say, generous figure.

But let's step away from these gorgeous confections and talk about the real workhorses - desk chairs and classroom chairs. These need to take a beating, fit different body types and perform for long hours. The desk chairs under consideration spent time at Sterling and then over to third floor Middleton. Lots of people filled out evaluations for these chairs because we all know the value of a good desk chair.

Speaking of evaluations, the design team drew (4) winners of a $10 WISCARD from all the completed evals:

Mickey Moe (student)
Diana Zlatanovski (staff)
Erin Hamilton (student)
Maya Lea (staff)

Congratulations and thanks for participating!