New building: now with a door!

It was a year ago that I started to wax lyrically about the progress made with our new building. Little did I suspect I would still be blogging about building work a year on. The last time I blogged about it things were still moving. But then a long period followed where it took  keen eye to see any progress. There was lots of painting, taking the paint off, and painting again, and digging holes, filling them up again, and then digging holes again.

It wasn't very pleasant. The digging holes tended to require road drills; the bedrock there is very hard. Nobody likes a road drill next to their office. And all the faffing and pootling required (apparently) many vehicles, frequently reversing; the endless beep beep beep beep that makes has driven many people up the wall too.

What I specifically didn't like about then endless building work was that the builders only left a very narrow path to the building the labs are in. They fenced everything else off. Sometimes the path was so narrow you almost had to go sideways; the fences sometimes sagged a lot too, so you had to go sideways at an angle. When it's just you you have to transport that's OK, but it often isn't. A large part of my work involves lugging core sections from the cold store down at the shore to the labs and back. The reasonable way to do that is on a trolley; the buggers are heavy! But no way that fits. As soon as these fences are gone I can finally stop molesting my back carrying the cores, and just cart them around. I can't wait!

The narrow path to the building with the labs in it

The entrance with the doors

Seen from the road

There seems to be a big penalty for the school/university if the building doesn't get taken into use soon, so now things have started to move again. Paths to then entrances started appearing. And suddenly the building acquired a door! That really made it look almost finished. I really hope the noise stops, the area is opened to all, and life can take its normal course at the School of Ocean Sciences. Finally!