Building a Better University, Room by Room

Bill Sturgess appreciates the clean line of a ceiling and wall coming together in a tight joint beneath a metal cap. He recognizes the nondescript frame that hides ribbons of pipes and a large junction box of wires merging at an outlet. He even notices a floor newly leveled from its formerly sinking cement base.

As a foreman of the university's In-house Construction and Carpentry unit, Sturgess has acquired a kind of X-ray vision through years of experience building and renovating campus office spaces from the inside out. At 9 a.m. on a mid-April day, Sturgess has already been at work for three hours. Inside the Service Building on Route 1, devoid of any of the ringing telephones, piles of paper, or even desks that previously distinguished the space, Sturgess and two of his crew are beginning an office renovation.

In a few weeks, the university's Facilities Management computer department will move into this renovated space from the cramped quarters it currently occupies nearby. "I really enjoy turning nothing or a really rough space into something you can put people in comfortably," says Sturgess, expressing a sentiment many in his department share.

At a university constantly growing and redefining itself, Sturgess and his colleagues are in high demand to work their magic. They change lavatories into lab spaces as well as hang bulletin boards and re-hinge sprung doors. They construct conference rooms from two-car garages, stabilize massive building columns with metal disks and hammer loose nails with all the care and dedication that comes with maintaining a 146-year-old institution.

Back at the Service Building, Sturgess's jack-of-all-trades-team is just beginning what will amount to several months' worth of renovation, as evidenced by a rough sketch of the demolition plan nailed into the wall.

Crewman Joe Bernavage hauls pieces of a former wall to a trash bin, while Jim Russ knocks apart the metal frame that had sequestered three small offices from a 25-by-60 foot room. These 10-foot floor-to-ceiling frames are sorted into another pile headed for the recycling center.

"You learn all kinds of different ways of doing things," says Bernavage, who has been on the team nine months. Russ, whose specialty is in sheet metal, has built campus offices for two years and says he is still learning. "Everybody has a little handyman in them," he says.

At half past 9, two supervisors stroll through the room, ducking around the thick cable wires and electrical boxes that hang from the ceiling. The stack of doors resting against a wall and some discarded furniture in the corner give clues to the space's immediate past and future uses.

The supervisors talk between themselves, gesturing at the gaps in the ceiling tile. They check for where to relocate the air-conditioning vents to accommodate the new office. In coming weeks, five other crews--including teams of electricians, painters and HVAC specialists--will also work in this space, and they will depend on Sturgess's crew to have built a solid framework.

A few minutes later, a voice carries over Sturgess's handheld radio. He is needed in Symons Hall, where another team is making cosmetic renovations on a second-floor office space. Sturgess jumps into his white pickup truck and heads across Route 1 into the heart of campus, where he parks on a sidewalk outside Symons.

In a second-floor workspace, his crew is hanging drywall in three offices configured out of what used to be a single large space. The drywall will cover up unsightly metal pipes and drab cement walls. A maintenance man strolls in to borrow a drill. When a light bulb burns out or a pipe bursts in any university building, the maintenance department is the first to check it out. Sturgess says that maintenance workers know their buildings like a second home, and often partner with the In-house Construction team by keying them into hidden electrical boxes that power entire areas.

As the maintenance man leaves, Chris Aggour, a College of Agriculture administrator whose department will be using the space, peeks in on the progress. "Before, the walls and lights were old and yellowy," she says. "This renovation will bring the office closer to the 21st century." Aggour adds that competition for the space was fierce.

"Space is at a premium. You won't find an empty space sitting without someone wanting it," adds Sturgess. The crunch for office space means that Sturgess's team often works in areas that are occupied. Their projects can generate a lot of dust and noise, which is also why the crew works early mornings.

Driving back at midday to In-house Construction's home base at the Pocomoke Building, Sturgess explains that larger projects, such as the new Comcast Center arena or whole-floor renovations, are contracted out to the university's Capital Projects Department that is separate from In-House Construction.

At the Pocomoke Building, inside a garage that used to serve an old campus fire station, Scott Westcamp stains a large desk-sized office mailbox into deep brown. With the radio rocking away, he polishes in smooth tight circles and pauses to say, "It makes me proud to take raw materials and turn them into something that people like and can use."

Westchamp's craftsmanship, precision and patience show in the made-to-order right-angled cabinets and shelves set around his shop. He also makes decorative finishings and crownings that are sometimes replicated from patterns last used in the 1940s.

The In-house Construction crew clocks in and out from the firehouse, and Sturgess drops by the adjacent warehouse several times a day to pick up supplies for his crew.

One week later, the renovation in the Service Building has been delayed and Bernavage and Russ have joined the Symons Hall team. The drywall is mounted and they are now sealing joints with 2-inch-wide tape where the sheets of drywall meet, smoothing over uneven places and sanding down the rough spots in preparation for the painters.

As Russ smears a glop of spackle gracefully into the wall, he says, "This job and working with my hands relaxes me. You get to be creative." A paint-splattered radio blasts popular songs and a few of the crew sing along. Meanwhile, Sturgess stretches a tape measure across the top of a window where he will transfer an air conditioner from the bottom of the window.

Next, Bernavage tries to open the window to remove the air conditioner, but the window will not budge. While Bernavage holds the cooling unit in place, Wayne Hiller comes to help. He pounds the right heel of his palm twice on the right top of the inner window frame, repeats with the left side and then bounces both heels in unison on the frame's top edges. The window slides up easily.

The two are careful not to bump a large bookcase leaning two feet away against a wall and sheltering a glass tabletop. Working around delicate valuables that are not easily replaced can be a challenge. "One of my most unusual jobs, which you would only have at a university, was to move a large bird-cage washer in the life sciences building," Sturgess recalls

James E. Haney, a project coordinator, comes by to check on how things are coming along. Since the office is about two weeks away from completion, Haney will soon be updating the client about how soon they can use the space. Sturgess, meanwhile, is off to check on the crew's next project.   --CP