Further details emerge on Mechanical Engineering refurbishment

New information about the delayed refurbishment of the Mechanical Engineering department has come to light in the past week; showing the effect of the disruption on PhD students and implying that the College was unhappy with the way the project was being managed and that the error with the £3 million exhaust system is just one area where the refurbishment has not proceeded smoothly.

In an extreme case, Felix has been told that due to the disruption from the refurbishment one PhD student is yet to start his experiment, three years after beginning his PhD. The student was not willing to speak to Felix about his situation as he is currently applying for an extension to his PhD. Several research groups have been hamstrung by the delays, mostly from the uncertainty over the completion date and from difficulties in providing temporary facilities for research. Currently around 12 PhD students in the thermal fluids division have to share a lab where only one student at a time can carry out their combustion experiments, due to insufficient ventilation.

The refurbishment of the Mechanical Engineering building began as part of a wider £277m South-East Quadrant (SEQ) project that envisaged a new modern building that would bring Mechanical, Aeronautical, and Civil Engineering together under one roof where the Mechanical Engineering building currently sits. It was first mooted in 2007 and included plans for a Business School-esque façade facing onto Exhibition Road. The project, which it was said would ‘make a statement about Engineering at Imperial’, was eventually shelved at the beginning of 2010 when Westminster Council rejected the College’s planning application, demanding changes to the design, and the College decided that the funds required to complete the project would be difficult to raise after the recession.

However, Phase One of the project, involving the refurbishment of the Skempton Building as well as the ongoing Mech Eng refurbishment had already received planning permission and funding from the College and both were well underway. Reports from Imperial’s former Chief Operating Officer Dr Martin Knight seemed to indicate that the refurbishment was continuing smoothly until May 2010, when he reported to College Council that the Mech Eng refurbishment was “now under the management of a different Arup project manager [...] and is under tight control”. The minutes record that he also said “An interim agreement has been drawn up to settle all current claims and variations”. The statements suggest that problems with the refurbishment were encountered as far back as spring last year and that the College were unhappy with Arup’s performance as project manager. The College declined to answer questions about the nature or scale of the problems referred to by Dr Martin Knight. Arup also declined to comment on this matter, suggesting that Felix ask the College. Neither of the architects involved in the SEQ project, Foster and Partners and Sheppard Robson, responded to requests for comment. Several efforts to contact Dr Martin Knight were unsuccessful at the time of writing.

In addition to last week’s news that a £3 million exhaust system for test engines was built with galvanised steel instead of stainless steel – an error that meant the exhaust wouldn’t “stand up to long-term use”, as the College described it – a number of other errors have delayed the renovation process. The most embarrassing is the news that sensitive measuring devices in a materials testing lab are disrupted by vibrations from researchers walking in the lab because the floor is too thin. Additionally the lab in which the test engines are situated has not been adequately sound-proofed, with questions raised about whether sound-proofing was in the original recommendations, and the ventilation space below the floor has been blocked off, meaning that researchers will be unable clean up fuel spillages or retrieve equipment if they drop it through grills in the floor.

The College are currently involved in an investigation on the cause of the blunder with the £3 million exhaust system as well negotiations about the final cost of the refurbishment and did not wish to comment specifically on the issues raised in this article. Steve Howe, Director of Capital Projects and Planning at Imperial, previously stressed that the liability for the exhaust mistake was still unknown and didn’t rule out the possibility that Imperial would have to meet some of the extra costs.

A College spokesperson issued this statement: “The College is taking seriously the remaining issues involved in the completion of the Mechanical Engineering refurbishment, and is working with the Department and the contractors to address them. The priority is to minimise further disruption to the work of students and staff as these issues are resolved. The majority of the contract works should be completed in June and users will then move in over the following months. On completion staff and students will receive the full benefit of the refurbishment work, which will deliver world-class teaching and research facilities.”

The contractors ISG Plc did not return requests for comment. A spokesperson for Arup said: “The programme management work we have been involved in to date is unrelated to the choice of materials for the exhaust [...] Our work was completed in accordance with the original programme and we aren’t party to any dispute with the client on this.”

If you have information about the ongoing refurbishment then please contact the Editor at felix@imperial.ac.uk. We will always protect your anonymity.