Construction Site Visit #2

Yesterday we visited two constructions sites on the campus of Virginia Tech. The first one visited was the new basketball facility on Washington Street, and the second was New Residence Hall West between Cochrane Hall, Harper Hall, and Student Services. We were split into teams of two for the purpose of finding the similarities and differences of the construction practices and processes between the two buildings.

There are quite a few commonalities between the two buildings, the main one being that the two buildings' exteriors are both being constructed in such a way as to represent Virginia Tech as well as continue the aesthetic theme of all of the other buildings on campus. Both buildings are being constructed out of precast concrete and Hokie stone, with the basketball facility being mostly precast and the residence hall being almost completely Hokie stone. While both sites are using high powered machinery such as cranes, forklifts, boom lifts, etc. in the building process, both sites had more immobilized equipment just sitting around the site than they needed at the time.

The site layout for the residence hall seemed to be very unorganized compared to the basketball facility. They had equipment and materials laying all over the ground of the site, and nothing seemed to have a set place. Parking was also very unorganized there, with cars scattered at all different places across the site. The basketball facility, on the other hand, was well organized, with storage of materials in one area and parking spots all in another area.

Both jobsites seem to be getting to the later stages of their work, with the majority of work taking place on the interior of the buildings. It seemed as though both sites were still using temporary power as their power source. However, there was still a decent amount of work that needed to be completed on the exterior of the buildings as well as landscaping. It appeared that the exterior of the building was nearly completed on the basketball facility, but the residence hall still had scaffolding covering one entire long side. There were workers on the scaffolding shaping Hokie stone with chisels and then putting it up on the walls. They also had workers on the ground cutting the stone with a wet table saw.

While there were some differences in the stages of construction and the overall construction processes, both buildings seemed to have the appearance and quality of what we have come to expect from buildings at Virginia Tech.