Notice Board

Over the course of the past three years, the focus of the Destination Project has been on construction, with crews working feverishly to complete the state-of-the-art Science and Academic Building. In a matter of months, the University will open one of the premier science academic and teaching facilities in the country.

To get to that point, the construction process will continue to wane and the focus of the building’s preparation will transition to an incredibly intricate move-in project. And while the move is just beginning now, the preparation for this stage has been ongoing from the earliest days of the building’s planning.

“With a move this massive and involving so much equipment, so many lab spaces and so many people, its planning was in step with the actual design planning of the building,” says Gene Lublinkhof, director of Science Facilities. “From the outset, we have been meeting with faculty members, department Chairs and anyone who is invested in this building, seeking their input as this project was developing.”

In particular, over the past year, the Science Facilities Office has partnered with the Faculty of Arts & Science and the Destination Project Office to develop a move plan that will effectively take 50 years of science teaching and research operations from various facilities on campus and bring them into the new Science and Academic Building.

It has been a coordinated effort, involving department leaders, allocating space to users, developing detailed move schedules and finetuning technical equipment move plans. In all, some 350 individuals and over 200 labs are relocating from the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience, Hepler Hall, the Alberta Water and Environmental Science Building and University Hall into a new 38,500 m2 facility.

“There are literally hundreds of items to plan out and move incrementally into the new space. Much of the existing science infrastructure has grown into place over the last 50 years, one project at a time. We are moving virtually all of this into the new building in just four months,” says Lublinkhof.

With the success of principal investigators, instructors, technicians, post docs and their programs riding on the building being fully operational in September, the transition into the new facility will take the coordinated efforts of electrical, mechanical and heavy mover trades, over 20 specialized scientific technical/engineering firms and numerous internal trades.

“This is going to be challenging and is frankly, on a scale we’ve never dealt with before,” says Lublinkhof. “We’ve worked with a lot of people and we’ve put a lot of time and resources into preparation. In the past few weeks we’ve even staged a few mock move scenarios to try and anticipate challenges we might run into. Now, we’re ready to go.”

Quick Facts

Over 350 individuals are moving into the Science and Academic Building
Over 200 labs are relocating to the new facility
700 pieces of equipment larger than a box are being tracked during the move
200 of the 700 equipment pieces require special provisions to move, with 150 of those requiring multiple special provision contractors
Over 1,000 rooms and corridors are on the Science and Academic Building import list