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Your Georgia Connection: Rich Olivier, Atlanta, GA • 1-800-409-1479
New Biological Sciences Building Involves Tight Site Work By Peter Hildebrandt CEG CORRESPONDENT
Requiring just about everyone to take a certain course is one way to end up needing a new college campus building. Georgia Southern University (GSU) in Statesboro, Ga., has as one of its graduation requirements for approximately 90 percent of its majors, completion of at least one course in biology during the college careers of students enrolled there. The growth in enrollment also has meant the biology department itself has had to expand to keep up with the needs of the university. Since the campus population has been steadily growing, with record enrollment levels in the past few years, so has the demand for space for all those students to do their coursework in biology. The new Biological Sciences building on the GSU campus should soon be able to help that space problem. The old biology building will still be used for classroom space so there will be no demolition work involved on this building. Expected increases in enrollment are projected to continue over the upcoming years. “The building alone will not house the entire biology department at GSU but it will drastically increase the area they’ll have with more advanced classroom facilities and additional research and student labs,” said Bonnie D. McMakin, program manager Facilities Planning, Design and Construction, Georgia Southern University. “The old biology building will not be torn down. We’ll need it for the classroom space and for the
At the moment Brasfield & Gorrie, General Contractors, with corporate headquarters in Birmingham, Ala., is the main contractor on the project, in addition to a grading contractor onsite.
increasing number of students attending GSU. Some of it may still be used by the biology department and anything not used by them will be renovated and made usable for regular classroom space. It has to be in really bad shape for us to tear a building down; we try to renovate buildings whenever we can. We have no room to tear anything down and just do away with it, the need is so great. We are a growing campus we’re proud to say.” Unfortunately the area cleared for the new biological sciences building was one of the last wood-
ed sites remaining on the GSU campus, according to McMakin. They were, however, able to maintain the trees around the site; they only cleared what they had to clear to make way for the building. The new building and its construction will not impact the student traffic flow on campus either as the building is on the edge of the university grounds in the direction that new growth for the school is moving anyway. This construction will not disrupt any ongoing classes through the end of its completion. Georgia Southern University’s goal is to attain LEED Silver
Certification for the building. “Our campus standards already incorporate a lot of the energy savings features as far as mechanical, electrical and plumbing features,” added McMakin. “That makes it even easier to achieve the LEED Certification for the building. The roof will be constructed and outfitted for the infrastructure for solar voltaic power at some point. But it will be installed at a later time, due to budgetary constraints. Hopefully in the future we will be able to add solar energy components.” The building will have three
main floors in addition to a fourth floor dedicated solely to mechanical equipment and controls. Total net square footage of the building is 125,595 sq. ft. (11,668 sq m). The building project started out in one building and they were actually designing it for different phases depending upon what funding was available. But now they’re definitely able to get the work completed in one phase. “The actual building design has evolved, due to value engineering, to stay within budget, into four separate structures,” added McMakin. “The main building will have a separate greenhouse; a field house which consists of the animal care facility and also a central energy plant adjacent to this structure.” At the moment Brasfield & Gorrie, General Contractors, with corporate headquarters in Birmingham, Ala., is the main contractor on the project, in addition to a grading contractor onsite. Brasfield & Gorrie’s closest office to the site is in Kenesaw, Ga., just north of Atlanta. The grading work is being done by Sikes Brothers Inc. in Metter, Ga., ten miles from Statesboro. John Fulford, project manager of Brasfield & Gorrie, has been onsite since 2009; the entire job is projected to be completed by May 2013. “The biggest challenge on this job is simply going to be that it’s a very tight site making it tough to move around with the equipment we’ll be using,” explained Fulford. “It’s going to present trials just to be able to work your way around the building. “As far as site excavation work, all of that work is going to be done see GSU page 2