Building Team completes two additions at UCLA

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) completed Holly Ridge and Gardenia Way, the newest buildings in the De Neve Plaza housing complex, capable of housing 800 students.

The construction of Holly Ridge and Gardenia Way finished several months ahead of schedule, allowing students to migrate to the new residence halls from the formally occupied Dykstra Hall in February.

Holly Ridge, also known as Upper De Neve, will house 496 students and Gardenia Way, also known as Lower De Neve, will house 307 students. Dykstra Hall will now undergo renovations to turn the 400-room building into a 10-story structure by 2013.

Holly Ridge and Gardenia Way are two of the four new resident hall additions to the UCLA campus as part of the Northwest Campus Student Housing In-Fill Project.

Upon completion, the Northwest Campus Student Housing In-Fill Project will add 500,000-sf of residential space including a 750-seat dining room, 1,525 bed spaces for single undergraduate students, student meeting rooms, and multi-purpose rooms that can accommodate up to 450 students. In total, the project will increase campus housing capacity from approximately 10,500 undergraduate students to approximately 12,000 in either new or renovated resident halls by fall 2013.

Gafcon Inc. and partner Benchmark Contractors are construction managers for the Northwest Infill project working alongside general contractor PCL Construction Services, Inc.

PCL Construction’s introduction of BIM for construction to the UCLA campus along with Gafcon’s SharePoint360 document storage services helped streamline project information for all partners and contributed to the early completion of the project. Architects for the project were Pfeiffer Partners Architects, Inc. and KieranTimberlake. BD+C

Before you get your shorts in a knot, I have nothing against science, technology, engineering, or even mathematics; to the contrary, I love all four “STEM” disciplines (I’m lying about the math). But I question whether we need to be building K-12 schools that overly emphasize or are totally devoted to STEM.

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Engineering and construction CEOs are cautiously optimistic about the global economy, says PwC

Firm leaders remain leery about the availability of skilled workers, the state of government debt and deficits, and rising material prices, according to PwC’s 2014 Global CEO Survey.