The Olympian

Issue date: 10/10/07 Section: Campus

Media Credit: Sophie Siemion And the wall came tumbling down. The south side of the Math/Science Building (above) after the mosaic was removed in three sections. The building is being demolished to make room for an 80,000 square foot, three-story humanities building. The biggest concern for many students is what to do about parking during this long transition phase.

It's hard to miss the
bright orange cones, temporary
fencing and piles of
dirt that have taken up residence
where students used
to mingle.
The Math/Science
Building is in full "destruction,
reconstruction" mode
and according to Cathryn Catledge, capital projects coordinator, "Things have really been
going along well."
On Aug. 2, the contractors
finished a procedure
called the abatement process,
which is the removal
of all hazardous materials.
Materials found are not neccessarily
bad for Olympic
College's environment;
but when broken down,
chemicals like asbestos
can be harmful in landfills.
Currently the crew is working
on something called the
early utilities project.
"This is a messy project,"
Catledge said.
The University Quad
and the Health Occupations
Building both have sets of
utilities which run through
the Math/Science Building.
To ensure a clean demolition
process that does not
disrupt other utilities on
campus, the crew must reroute
the current utilities.
To make sure that they
don't withhold the campus
from water, gas, or electricity,
the crew will follow
a process referred to as
cutovers.
"We put new routes in
place before we install the
new one." Catledge said.
The cutovers are optimistically
brief minute segments
where there is time
to disconnect one system
and connect another.
On Thursday, the fire
alarm and telephone lines
were switched in a cutover
process and a power outage
was scheduled to take

Continued...

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