Board of trustees also approves campus renovation budget increases
Construction is on schedule and on budget for the $106.5 million Moore School of Business building, the project’s director told USC’s board of trustees Friday.
The building — the most expensive in the university’s history — is due for completion in December 2013 and should meet that deadline, barring any bad weather, said Lekita Hargrave, the project director.
“We anticipate more along the timing of March and April, as the building is starting to close in, that we’ll have more control over our environment, and we’ll be a little more comfortable with being able to control that schedule moving forward,” she said.
Both the timeline and the budget have been listed as a “risk” Hargrave noted, because of the construction’s tight schedule and a final goods and services package that hasn’t been awarded yet. That package, likely a multi-million-dollar contract including A/V equipment, will be advertised in the next month and could change the budget projection, Hargrave said.
“However, we feel very comfortable with the budget at this time,” she said.
The four “cores” — towerlike structures at each corner of the 260,000-square-foot building — have been constructed and will each house elevators and staircases. A 300-ton steel enclosure is being built, and a topping-out ceremony is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 4, when its last pieces are put in place.
Change orders, in which plans for the building are tweaked and which cost both time and money, have taken up less than 0.12 percent of the budget, Hargrave said — a key factor in the project’s success so far.
By the time the construction’s complete, the new Moore School is expected to have created 1,700 jobs.
About 16 percent of the budget is planned to be spent with minority and women-owned firms, and the building is targeted for a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Platinum grading.
USC has also tracked the project in terms of safety, and the building has seen two incidents so far.
The first happened on Aug. 23 when a USC student, allegedly driving drunk, ran through construction barriers and hit a worker. That worker has not yet returned to the project, but Hargrave said the university is keeping tabs on his recovery. The driver was charged with felony DUI with great bodily injury. The second incident occurred when one worker dropped a wrench that fell and hit another. That employee has recovered and is back at work on the project, Hargrave said.
At the meeting, USC Chief Financial Officer Ed Walton took a moment to introduce Hargrave and several other members involved with construction in attendance.
“This won’t slow the project down?” one of the board members quipped, referencing the pressing deadline.
“That’s why we wanted to cut the meeting short,” Walton joked.
The trustees also approved several upticks in price to scheduled projects around campus.
A $340,000 refit of a 1,500-square-foot laboratory for laser research by the physics and astronomy departments in the basement of the Jones Physical Sciences Center got an OK from the board. Institutional funds will pay for the project.
A $995,000 Coker Life Sciences renovation received an extra $155,000 for HVAC services, bringing the project to a total budget of $1.15 million, also paid for with institutional funds.
The board’s buildings and grounds committee was also notified of increases in the budgets of renovations to the Horizon Building, the Spigner House and 1200 Catawba Street.
The Horizon building received a $30,000 increase from the provost’s office to pay for changes to how the building manages monitored laboratory gases, including point-of-use regulators and changes to the building’s piping that would go with them. This increase brings the project’s total budget is now $995,000 in institutional funds.
Spigner, which is used by Sodexo, got a $100,000 increase to address subfloor remediation work, extensive asbestos abatement and repairs to impacted sewer and storm drainage lines. The project will now cost $1.1 million, funded by institutional money from an auxiliary food service account.
The budget for 1200 Catawba Street’s renovation went up by $49,500 to renovate laboratory space for biomedical engineering and to make water and gas piping repairs. That increase came from the office of the provost.