Lessons from the Mechanical Engineering building refurbishment

The renovation of the Mechanical Engineering Department has not run smoothly, to put it mildly. As Felix has reported in previousweeks, it has seen delays, hiccups, and errors that have caused snorts of derision around campus. With this in mind, we suggested to the College and the Department that they open the doors to the department to show us a renovation that is nearing completion, and also to open up about the challenges that they have faced and the reason why the renovation has experienced so many problems. They agreed and last Tuesday I found myself donning a high-vis jacket, a hard hat, and a pair of rugged black boots that wouldn’t look out of place at a Slayer concert, to head into what is very much an active construction site.

I’m with Steve Howe, Director of Capital Projects and Planning, Tim Venables the Operations Manager for Mechanical Engineering, and Richard Martin, Operating Officer for the Faculty of Engineering. When I first meet them, the sense of ‘you’ve been writing about us’ hangs in the air, but they’re relaxed, the worst of the renovation is past them and they’re looking forward to the work being completed in July, with students moving back in the months following – as Steve Howe puts it, people are usually miffed while the work is ongoing, but then appreciate the product when it’s completed.

The renovation of levels zero and one of the Mechanical Engineering building was always going to be fraught with difficulty. Combine a technically difficult job with a bunch of extremely intelligent PhD students whose work has been disrupted and you’re likely to see tensions rise. Errors such as the building of a £3 million exhaust system with galvanised steel – meaning that before long the warm corrosive gases that it is supposed to vent would degrade it – were met with disbelief by Mechanical Engineers; one can imagine them shaking their heads and saying “but it’s so obvious!”

But not always. Take for example a problem they encountered with a large hydraulic oil pump that caused vibrations throughout the building when turned on. In January the problem was discovered – noise could be heard in lecture theatres – and it wasn’t until April that the problem was fixed when better damping was installed on the pumps. Why wasn’t it foreseen that a pump would cause vibrations that moved through the building? There’s an almost identical machine in Skempton, which had the same type of damping (and had been installed by the same contractor), that didn’t create any problems at all. From the College’s point of view, there was no evidence to suggest that the Mech Eng pump would behave any differently.

As we walk around I see the little and not so little hiccups that have caused delays. The infamous £3 million exhaust system looms above our head. They’ve almost completed the corrective work on it but as expected won’t tell me what the liability could be; with lawyers involved Steve Howe is careful not to say anything that could jeopardise Imperial’s chances of getting the best deal possible. I ask about the sound-proofing in the engine testing labs and am conveniently pointed towards the label on the wall which says ‘sound insulation’.

There’s no doubt that the Department and College have taken pains to correct all the problems that they’ve encountered. Indeed the new labs are impressive and the investment shouldn’t be tainted by the difficulties that they’ve faced – these truly are modern, world-class facilities. The pivotal question is why were so many problems encountered and what has been learnt?

There is of course the obligatory explanation that construction jobs are often overrun and that the reason that you always have a contingency fund is because it’s inevitable that something’s going to crop up. But as Steve Howe himself notes, the College have delivered projects under-budget and early before, why not this one?

‘The work that we’re asking the designers and contractors to do is technically difficult. It’s pushing their boundaries’, says Steve. Tim Venables concurs with him pointing to the fact that building a mechanical engineering lab is far more difficult than renovating a lecture theatre. Although neither of them say it explicitly, there seems to be a sense that the technical complexity of the job perhaps wasn’t fully appreciated from the start. Steve Howe says that in future they’ll be taking a much finer tooth-comb to the specifications and requirements of each room and involve more in-house specialist expertise. “We know that there’s a need to scrutinise the use of each and every room in a very detailed way to understand exactly what is required.” He adds, “in the past we’ve expected the designer or contractor to bring in their own specialists in areas where its needed, but in future I think that we’re going to be doing that on our end regardless”.

Put his comments into the context of the renovation and they’re hardly surprising. All of the parties involved probably could have a done a better job in ensuring that the finished product would be exactly fit for purpose. To Imperial’s credit, where they’ve identified shortcomings they haven’t simply sat on their hands. This is a ‘better late than sub-standard’ situation.

So what to think of this £36 million refurbishment? Certainly the disruption caused to PhD students shouldn’t be ignored; it’s hard not to sympathise with them when you see slightly cramped facilities that they’re using while they wait to move back into the proper labs. There are hints that the delays have caused friction between the Department and the College, but again that’s hardly surprising. The College has recently applied for planning permission to modernise the exterior of part of the Mech Eng building by cladding it in aluminium, and I get the impression that when the renovation is completed and the lessons have been learned, that any acrimony will fade into distant memory. Except for the exhaust – that’ll probably be a running joke in the Mech Eng department for quite some time.