For those of you who attended Academic Senate this week you learned how productive the Facility Review Committee was this summer. Over the years many of us have watched as our college has morphed from a 1960’s campus to the beautiful facility we have today. Although these changes have been positive, sometimes they have come as a surprise to us. Even when we know of an upcoming project, we often wish we had the opportunity to give feedback.
At Academic Senate, many people have had questions regarding the Science Center and the renovations of the Amstuz, Fitzgibbons and Brahan buildings. The campus community expressed to the officers of Senate a desire to know more about what is being constructed. As a result, in April 2011, the Academic Senate established a sub-committee of the Planning Committee named the Facility Review Committee to accommodate this need.
Communication was the committee’s primary goal. We wanted to find ways to inform the college and solicit feedback about current projects. The classroom survey sent to all faculty at the beginning of the semester is one way the committee is gathering information. Your responses will help us in the creation of classroom standards for our college. If you have not taken it please consider doing so.
Another way to reach out to the community was to provide information about upcoming construction projects on our campus and offer a place to view and comment on those plans. The library has graciously agreed to provide an area for plan review. In this area, you will find the plans for construction projects through 2013, a computer to access our feedback form and instructions on how to do this. Librarians will direct you to this location.
Our next goal was to create an electronic response form where you could ask questions and receive feedback directly from the project architect. The form the committee designed is a digital spreadsheet. Anyone with access to the portal may access it. All posted queries and the architect’s responses to each will be viewable in our folder on the portal.
Two projects are currently available for review in the library. They include the well publicized Science Center building and the equally exciting renovation of the Marvin Library building. The last project to be placed there this fall will be the plans for the renovation of Amstuz, Fitzgibbons and Brahan. These will be forthcoming as soon as the architect presents the drawings to Steve Cowan. Due to the high cost of change orders however, once a project is bid, comment periods will close on these projects. The one exception will be comments regarding health or safety issues.
We hope you will take the opportunity to look at these plans. The ability to read drawings is not a prerequisite for asking a question or mentioning concerns you might have. Each project will have its own form.
Please use the following instructions to access the feedback form:
1) Open the HVCC Web Page
2) Click Faculty/Staff or Students
3) Click My HVCC Portal/Blackboard
4) At left under “My Organizations” click Academic Senate
5) Click Committees – scroll down below the standing committees
6) Click Facility Review Committee
7) Click Facility Review Committee Feedback Forms – (there is one feedback form per building project)
Other information you will find in this folder includes:
- Facility Review Committee Charge
- About the Facility Review Committee
- Facility Review Committee Membership
- Facility Review Committee Minutes
Again, we urge you to take advantage of this new service and if at any time you feel your question has not been answered to your satisfaction feel free to contact a committee member. As noted above, our names are in the same folder where the electronic comment forms are found.
Published: Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:00:18 +0000 by s.kilgallon