Wednesday 8 October 2008

A bit of a cheat

The push to get us to financial close continues to be a bit all consuming, but I'm determined to keep on bloggin'. One of the things I've been charged with doing is keeping staff abreast of developments. We have started a fortnightly BSF staff group, and the minutes of this are circulated, but on alternate weeks I've agreed to send out a building update. I thought I'd post this week's update to give you a small flavour of life on half a building site. I promise I won't make a habit of this.

"Firstly just to let you know that the builders will be using this Thursday pm and Friday to make a whole heap of noise, so please be aware and arrange to keep away from the site borders for interviews etc.

Over half term some major, major works will take place (e.g. staircase removal) which will literally make the whole building shake, the effects of which can be described by people who were around over the summer. Please do not arrange any activities in the school main building for that week. It should be OK to go in the temporary classrooms, but please notify Dionne or the Schoolkeepers if that is what you plan to do. There will be excavation around the L block, so this will be completely out of bounds. The sixth form loos will be inaccessible to students during lesson time from half-term onwards as the D stairs will be coming out.

The second generator will be arriving Thursday pm and installed on Friday & Saturday. There may be a need to take electricity down on Friday, but we really hope this won’t be necessary.

Electricity will need to come off in the main block this Friday from 4pm. This will mean that the network will also come down and not be available again until Saturday.

The frame for the new block will be delivered during w/c 20th October and will be installed over the following 2 weeks. The concrete will be poured for the ground floor slabs on Friday.

The area on the boundary of the building works has suffered particularly from noise, although there is an agreement that there should only be low-level noise during lesson time. One of the main causes is the need to punch through floors/ceilings to create spaces for the risers that will contain the new services. Apparently there is a large amount of structural intervention needed in this area.

Over the next few days there will be localised drilling around the 6th form study area, which is necessary in order to prepare for the new block being attached to it. This should be outside of lesson time only. The wooden partition will soon be replaced with a wall, which will considerably improve acoustic separation.

Further works to improve the whiteboard installation in the temporary classrooms will take place on Thursday & Friday.

I will be trying to get to see Heads of Department/Faculty about room layouts over the next few days. For phase 2 departments I need agreement about the teaching wall only. The rest of the room layout follows from that."

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