Back again (do I hear a collective groan?) after a happy, if somewhat wet, week touring in our RV. So returning to ODEC I was excited to see what’s been going on since I last walked the hallowed and muddy ground of our construction site.
Let me start with the rear wing, the biggest room is still full of furniture and fittings collected from the offices and the office corridor as the precursor to our renovation work. For the most part the rear wing is finished, true there is still some glass to be installed, restrooms to finish and IT and fire alarm systems to be commissioned but that aside it’s done! The walkthrough between the rear wing and the main building is still under construction but construction on the old library is mostly done and now waiting for painting and carpet. Before the project is completed this room will be resurrected as a small, permanent studio and enjoy ducted HVAC instead of those old, in wall units that used to crank and wheeze away like an old steam engine. The office and admin corridor renovation are also mostly completed. There’s new lighting, new carpets, new paint and a new printer/copy/fax and IT closet that will take the bird’s nest of a wiring installation out from the corner of the administrator’s office where it has been such a style icon for so many years! There is also the green shoots of new office furniture starting to appear in the refurbished office spaces so once the new IT network is up and running, and the favored items of furniture returned from the back wing, the regular inhabitants will be able to return from Tucker Hall, the Historic Church organ loft, home and wherever else renovation works dispersed the community! The Narthex and Great Hall have enjoyed a quiet week both poised, as they are, between the end of the main construction and fitting out the inside. Yes, walls are built, roofs are on, brickwork is laid, the heating and air-cooling system is installed and where possible insulation is fitted. This temporary pause is very much a brief lull before the next building storm that will see dry wall installation, painting, ceilings, lighting, and A/V system installations. And what perfect, God sent timing with the building nigh on empty the Great Hall could be cleared, brushed out and setup as a fallback location in the event the 1000 hrs Palm Sunday outdoor service was washed out. And now, for the first time in many weeks I can also turn my flying, fickle, blogging figure of fate onto the outside with the impending return of Higgerson to dig out the final underground bio system tank for the storm water treatment system (this will sit between the Great Hall and N. Witchduck Rd). Once the tank is completed Higgerson will turn their earth moving attentions on to completing the road traffic infrastructure (curbing, carparks, vehicle entrances), footpaths and the landscaping. So if, as the Flanders and Swann song goes, you are keen on glorious mud you must hurry down to the ODEC hollow to wallow, perhaps for one last time, in glorious mud for soon the site will be mud-less (and perhaps that long missing shoe will reappear?). Stay safe and stay healthy! David.
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As I sat down to pen this blog (figuratively speaking) I glanced at my calendar and read a recurring entry for 13 March 2021, I’d written a year ago “COVID-19 Close Down 2020.” It has been a year since the COVID-19 pandemic brought such havoc, disruption and change to our lives but a year on from that calendar entry vaccines are starting to offer the prospect of a less isolated future and that set against the backdrop of the new construction brings one word to my mind: “RESURGAM.”
Lest you think I’ve gone all classical on you fear not for I have, alas, not become a Latin scholar but I have known this word for almost as long as I can remember – “RESURGAM” (‘I will rise again’)* is engraved over the north door of the Minister Church of St Andrew in Plymouth UK (my home town) and I definitely feel a very strong whiff of “RESURGAM” in the air as we approach our celebration of The Christ’s Resurrection. All this introduction, which I hope you do not find too contrived, brings me to the blogging about the new construction’s brickwork. The brickwork on the Great Hall and Narthex is nearly done and soon the bricklaying team will be off to pastures new leaving us with a masterpiece of their craft that I am sure, in years to come, will be marveled as we today marvel the craft that built the Historic Church. Even though I visit the building site on more than the odd occasion I am always struck, perhaps almost surprised, at the harmony between the old and the new. Until this past week I thought this harmony was best appreciated from the prospect offered by Sentara carpark from where you can see the new building backed by the Historic Church but it’s no longer so. This week I found a new vantage point whilst standing by the Historic Church and looking across at the new building, the Old standing strong in front of the New, I’ve tried to capture the sight in a picture above! Laying the bricklayers aside (yes! I meant to do that) it has been a week of “Erics.” There was Eric the “data network guy” from Secure Network Solutions (SNS) building out our new IT closet. Then there was Eric “the dais guy” who delivered the new platform that, once sheathed in the appropriate shade of laminate, will carry the Altar in the Great Hall. And then, of course, there’s Eric and his crew, the general-purpose demo/build/paint team of furniture movers I blogged about last week. This week has also brought an abundance of parishioner visitors to the site, another sign we are starting to break the shackles of COVID-19. Early in the week it was Janet Forbes and Vicki Dorsett both providing expert input on how the new Altar Guild room should be fitted out. Then there was Mal Higgens providing his legal advice and then a group of ladies meeting with Diane Miller. I do very much enjoy it when there’s an opportunity to walk a visitor around the new construction, I think the way people genuinely get “lost” in buildings, which before construction they were so familiar with, speaks volumes about the amount of change that’s taken place over the past year…..and so far not too many adverse comments and, long may that last! This will be my last blog for a couple of weeks so until then stay safe and stay healthy, David Beach. “RESURGAM” (‘I will rise again’): In 1941 the City of Plymouth, like London, was subjected to very heavy bombing raids, the Minister Church of St Andrew was burnt out and left a roofless shell. Later a board bearing the word ‘RESURGAM’ (‘I will rise again’) appeared over the north door – the sign remains there to this day. I am told once the building was made safe the parishioners planted grass and continued to hold services throughout the war and on until their Church was rebuilt. At about this time last year, just as we were entering the grips of the pandemic, I was lucky enough to join the members of the Vestry and shortly thereafter to be able to take the Vestry on a guided tour of our construction site. Back then a great deal of what I described was in the mind’s eye with much of the actual work taking place below the surface where Higgerson, the site contractor, was digging out and installing the new storm water management system and preparing the ground for the new rear wing.
What an incredible amount of construction action has happened over the past 12 months and for this year’s annual Vestry meeting I was able to lead the Vestry on a tour, all mask wearing and maintaining social distancing, around the existing buildings whilst the meeting itself was held in a large room in the new rear wing, albeit a room that looked like we were about to have an estate auction but more on that later. Last week I spent some blogging time chatting about the folks working around the site and promised to introduce a few more “construction stars” in this blogging episode. So to honour* that promise….. The Network Team: Most of the time there are two of them who by the very nature of the task always seem to be working where other people are not as they lay out and install what now seems to be a mile or more of blue CAT-6 cabling around the building. “What the heck is he blogging about now?” I hear you ask well as it happens CAT-6 cabling and data networks are something I do know a bit about so these two fellows are putting in the cables (called CAT-6) that will bring the little holes in the walls where you can plug in a computer or printer to life – it’s our new computer network that will also provide a WiFi connection to the internet to anyone armed with a lap top anywhere in the buildings, old or new. These cables are all being brought back, like a blue spider’s web, to our IT room and thereby giving Gretchen’s office a well-deserved relief from the tangle of technology that used to lurk and blink away in the corner. Eric’s Crew: I don’t know what else to call them but “Eric’s Crew,” a multi-talented and multi-role gang with a dynamic husband-and-wife demo come plasterers* duo at its core. If you need something ripping down (and believe me, we had a lot that needed ripping down) or need something putting up then these two are the point people in the construction assault. But there’s more! If you have a corridor and offices all full of heavy furniture have no fear for Eric’s crew are here (now that has a catchy ring to it, maybe their jingle?) and so it was that last Monday found Eric’s expanded crew, including the dynamic duo, shifting furniture out of the admin corridor and into the rear wing as a preliminary to the carpet team laying carpet and the paint team painting, which is a nice segway to my next topic. Moving large bits of furniture is not for the faint hearted so it was with some degree of relief that I was able to gratefully accept Scott Crumley’s offer of a work gang (also known as Eric’s Crew) to move the contents of the admin corridor and its offices into the largest room in the new back wing for temporary storage. Desks, chairs, bookcases, filing cabinets and sundry items all moved in the space of a couple of hours to make way for paint and new carpets. Some of this stuff was a tad on the heavy side and not just because of their sturdy build but in at least three instances because they were also still full of files, books, paperwork and, I think, someone's lunch. In the great move of things, the winning piece of furniture in the most difficult category goes, by unanimous decision, to the large, slightly overstuffed, leather settee that used to adorn Father Bob’s office. It will always be a mystery to “we-who-were- there” exactly how Eric and team got that recalcitrant beast through the office door, miracles do happen but then what should we expect? After all it is Father Bob’s office! And that brings me back to the Vestry meeting, another neat blogging segway even if I do say so myself, for that is why the Vestry found itself in a room filled with all types of office furniture. Finding a place to sit was certainly no problem and even that leathery old warhorse of a settee found itself busier than it has been for several months! Stay safe and stay healthy, David Beach. “Honour” Brit spelling for honor (and having lived in the States since 2003 I had to look that up) “Plasters” In England they put plaster on the walls, in the USA it’s mud! I thought for this blog I would try and introduce some of the individuals in the various work crews working on the site. Now off the bat I must confess that I am not good at remembering names, never have been and my expectation is I never will be. I have always greatly admired those individuals who can grasp and file away a name at the first encounter, Father Bob has that gift, but for me it has always been a case of "in one ear and out of the other" not matter how attentive I am, even clever memory tricks don’t help. So in this blog you are dealing with a blogger who not only struggles to remember names but also found several “voices” on the site to be, sadly, unintelligible to my Brit ear! With that caveat, let’s get at it!
The Electricians In the main there are two of them, one very definitely the supervisor who carefully studies the electrical systems and fire alarm cabling diagrams with great diligence before dispatching his team, of one, into various walls, voids, and roof spaces to do whatever has to be done. There is an awful lot of cabling in the constriction project and not just cable to power-points*, lights and switches but also the heavy-duty electrical systems that bring the main power utility to the new buildings. We also have a second team of electricians that mainly focus on work in the existing buildings to upgrade lights and fix some of the old infrastructure’s electrical “quirks” that have so blighted the construction projects. The Bricklayers This bunch are cut from the same cloth as my famous “Bueno Wellie Gang” of concrete pad fame! The Bricklayers are a rowdy bunch who favor the “building site yell” over the quiet word. I can’t begin to describe how the “Brickie Bunch” ply their trade but suffice to say there’s a supervisor armed with plum line and spirit level, there the two chaps who actually place the bricks then there are a couple of worthies (official title is “hod carrier”) who carry bricks and mortar to the brick layers to keep the production process going. I hope from my pictures you can get an idea of the great job the “Brickie Bunch” do. The Roofers The roofers are, to me, a slightly mystical team that was once very evident on the site but who are now quite literally “heard but not seen” as they work on the back sides of the roof that are invisible from ground level. Their modus operandi promotes this mystical persona for the team arrive on site at first light, often when the morning mist still shrouds the earth (actually I’m edging towards blogging poetic license a bit there) to “get at it” with their orange lift used to hoist the day's worth of materials up onto the roof before they vanish up ladders and over roof ridges leaving us earth bound mortals to struggle through a day that is marked by the cacophony of their banging hammers and ethereal yells! The HVACers The “heating, ventilation and air conditioning team (I call them the HVACers) are a bit like the very air their systems manage because like air you know they are all around the building, you can certainly hear them but you can’t see them. Well, that is not strictly true because you can see the HVACers if you peer up into their natural “building habitat” of the roof rafters and roof space. Their task involves installing endless feet of flexible and boxed ducting, couples and junctions, ventilation grills, power cables, control panels and the units that deliver cold and hot air when you need it. All of this “gubbins*” is hidden from sight behind dry walls and drop ceilings or concealed in the roof space or even outside on the flat roof. Although they spend much of their time hidden in the rafters what they lack in “face- time” is more than compensated by their volume as they hold conversations across the expanse of the Great Hall as if they were sharing a booth in their favorite restaurant. The Handyman I think every construction needs a handyperson, in our case a handyman, who amongst other things over the past 12 months has refurbished the exterior of Alfriend House and washed the Historic Church. To me, the handyman seems to be an independent sort of cove*, certainly I would not accuse him of “not being a team player” but one who doesn't really need a team so he remains slightly aloof from the main effort. One who arrives on site with minimal fanfare, brings his own materials, tools, music, coffee and lunch gets on with the job, gets the job done and then vanishes after sending a short “job done” email. The new fencing around the day school’s outside classroom and more recently the rear of the building are his works. I think I’ve waxed lyrical enough in this blog but do not despair for I will be introducing some more of the folks working on our site in my next blog (do I hear the sigh of “deep joy”?) but for now stay safe and stay healthy, David Beach. “Power Points”: Not a Microsoft product but what Brits call electrical power sockets or power drops. “Gubbins”: Brit word for bits and pieces often used to describe the inner workings of a machine or motor….e.g. ”he dismantled the engine and now there’s all sorts of oily gubbins on the kitchen table.” “Cove” Old English (Dickensian) word for a man….e.g. “he wasn’t a bad sort of cove.” |
AuthorDavid Beach is our Building Project Manager, and has been an active part of our parish family for more than a decade. He is retired from NATO and the British Army and is a joy and blessing to all of us. Archives
July 2021
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