Campus Construction Update

Sign the Beam and Get a Treat

with

UAS Facilities, UAS Arts and Sciences, and Blazy Construction

9:00 – 3:00

October 31, 2022

Anderson Building

11305 Glacier Highway

The community is invited to join UAS Facilities, UAS Arts and Sciences, and Blazy Construction in celebrating the progress in constructing our new building, the Auke Bay Integrated Science Building. An iron workers tradition, the last structural beam is signed by workers before securing it in its final place in the building. Everyone is invited to stop by between 9:00 am and 3:00 pm to sign a beam that will become an integral part of the new building. 

The signed beam will be raised in November. Video of the beam being raised into place will be posted here.

October 14, 2022

Auke Bay Integrated Science Building Ongoing Construction

Six months into construction, underground infrastructure is close to wrapping up, and concrete foundation walls are rising out of the ground. Structural steel will be on site next week, and is expected to be complete before Fall Break.

Signing the last structural steel beam to be placed in the building is a tradition among ironworkers. Placing the last beam, or “topping out” the structure demarks a high point of the building structure. Keep an eye out for an opportunity to sign the beam before Fall Break!

Please contact Kristin Reynolds at kreynolds@alaska.edu or at (907) 796-6028 if you have any questions

The Auke Bay Integrated Science Building (ABISB) construction continues. One month into the physical portion of the project we are wrapping up shaping the site into what we need for a solid foundation. In June the truck traffic will reduce and we will see concrete forms on site.

The eagles continue to supervise the construction site from their nest, in spite of the aggressive harassment they receive from other birds while they are in their nest. The photo shows one of the eagles.

Please note:

Beach access is available

• Access to the beach from the parking lot: please follow directional signs that are posted for a safe path of travel to access the beach stairs.
• Access through the Anderson Building and out the lower level to the stairs will be available.

The fence will prevent pedestrians and public vehicles driving down the lane

• We will coordinate access to the lower level west side of the Anderson Building as needed in a safe manner that works for both the contractor activities and the needs of UAS.

Please contact Kristin Reynolds at kreynolds@alaska.edu or at (907) 796-6028 if you have any questions

The Auke Bay Integrated Science Building (ABISB) will begin construction on April 25, 2022. You will notice fencing outlining the extent of the construction site. This fence will be in place for the duration of the project in order to protect our students, staff, faculty, and the general public. Please respect the fencing.

Parking will remain available in front of the Anderson building throughout the project.

The fence will temporarily change the way to access the beach stairs

• Access through the Anderson Building and out the lower level to the stairs will always be available.
• Access to the beach from the parking lot will follow directional signs that will be posted for a safe path of travel to access the beach stairs.

The fence will prevent driving down the lane

• We will coordinate access to the lower level west side of the Anderson Building as needed in a safe manner that works for both the contractor activities and the needs of UAS. Directions on how to coordinate will be posted next week.

Please contact Kristin Reynolds at kreynolds@alaska.edu or at (907) 796-6028 if you have any questions

July 19, 2021 Water Leak Repaired

As mentioned in our campus wide e-mail Admiralty Construction and our Facilities Services crew worked late Friday and got all the pipe installed and turned on the water service to Egan.  Then on Saturday morning, they restored the water service to the rest of campus Saturday morning.  

 Leak caused by Rusted Pipe

This hole caused our water leak.  This piece of the pipe has rusted to the point where it finally gave way causing the leak.  The pipe is made from Ductile Iron and was installed in 1984, making it 37 years old.  Ductile Iron pipe has a standard life span of 50 years.  However, this can be significantly reduce depending on the corrosiveness of the soil, ground water level, construction methods, and stray electrical current.  This leak was located right below a bank of electrical and communications lines.  We suspect that it was the influence of these lines that shortened the lifespan of this piece of our water main.

New pipe installed ready for backfill

If the pipe was installed Friday evening, why not turn on the water to all of campus?  Most underground pipes are different from the above ground pipes you would find in your house.  They use a bell and spigot joint where the end of one pipe slides into the bell end of the next pipe.  The dirt surrounding the pipe and/or concrete thrust blocks are used to keep the pipe from pulling apart when pressurized.  They use these types of joints because of the ease of construction when in a narrow trench, their ability to flex/bend when the earth moves and the corrosion resistance the provide to the pipeline.  Above ground pipes use joints that are rigidly connected together by wielding, bolting, gluing or with brackets.  They are allows securely attached to the building to keep them from moving.  They do make thrust restrained joints for underground pipe and we used these type of joints on the section of pipe we repaired.  However, the joints beyond our repaired section are not thrust restrained and could slip while under pressure.  In addition, it takes time to bleed all the air out of the pipe main line to reduce the amount of air that enters our pipes inside the building.  Therefore, out of an abundance of caution to prevent additional damage to our water system, we postponed water services until Saturday morning after the pipe was backfilled and the line cleared of air.

Backfilling the water main

Saturday morning was spent backfilling the water line.  Note the bright pink insulation placed between the communication vault and the waterline.  During the winter, the inside of the communication vault can get cold because the top is right near the ground surface.  This insulation will protect the waterline from freezing caused by the cold communication vault.

Vac-Truck Hero

The Vac-Truck was just one of the heroes who helped get our campus up and running again.  Our Facilities Crew, Administrative Team, and Admiralty Construction worked together on a short notice and schedule to have our campus back on line in less than 22 hours.  Here is a good photo of the vac-truck using a stream of water to loosen the harden soil around the utilities, and then the vac-hose can pick up the soil and water at the bottom of the trench.

Water Leak Found  2021 -07-16

This morning the City and Borough of Juneau came to campus to help us locate the water leak.  with their Electronic Underground Water Leak Detector.  This device works in the same way a doctor listens to your heat beat.  A sensitive microphone is set on the ground and the device lets you hear the water squirting out of the pipe.  By moving the microphone to different places on the ground surface, you can get a good estimate where along the pipeline to dig and find the leak.

Once they marked a spot on the ground to start digging, we called the utility company to come locate underground electrical and communication lines.  Murphy’s Law held true as the water leak is right where there are the most utilities to make excavation very difficult. 

Lots of Under Ground Utilities

The Contractor, Admiralty Construction, used an excavator and Vac-Truck to dig an 8 feet deep hole.  Vac-Trucks are a wonderful piece of equipment.  They are a large vacuum that can suck up dirt, rocks, water and about anything that gets in its way.  The Vac-Truck can suck up the dirt around the buried utilities, without damaging the utilities.  The contractor would need to do a lot of hand digging if they did not have a Vac-Truck.

Vac Truck

The Contractor found the hole in the pipe about noon.  They had shut off two valves on the water main, one on each side of the hole.  However, the valves would not seat properly and water continued to get by the valves.  They tried several methods for re-seating the valves, but none of them worked. 

The next valve in line we could use to get the water shut off for this section of pipe is on the other side of the Egan building.  At about 1:00 pm we shut this valve off which also shut off the water to the Egan building.  Un-fortunately, when shutting this valve down, the key connector striped making it impossible for us to open or close the valve.  This required bringing another excavator on site and crew to excavate this valve and replace the key connector.

One More Valve

The next valve in line we could use to get the water shut off for this section of pipe is on the other side of Back Loop road at out pump house.  Thankfully, this valve worked like is should and we got the water completely shut off.  We notified the Forest Service Lab that we shut the pump house valve off which shuts off water service to their building.

The Admiralty Construction will be working late to get UAS back on line

Working Late

Check back to see how the repair was actually made.

Today one of our crew noticed some water coming out of an equipment box near the Mourant building.

The box was not marked, so we did not know if there were live electrical lines in the box.  We looked in into the archives and found that these boxes were for communication lines.  This meant it was safe for us to open the boxes to see what was inside.  Upon opening the boxes, we found the conduits were spares for future use.  About 10 gpm of water was coming out of the conduits.

We know it has been a wet summer, but this still seemed odd to have water suddenly show up in these conduits.  One possibility is that one of the recent earthquakes could have fractured one of the conduit joints allowing water to infiltrate the conduit.

Water travels the path of least resistance.  Therefore, when you have a water leak it can show up almost anywhere downstream.  Our crew did some more detective work looking for more clues.  They looked into manholes, catch basins, and downhill slopes.  Our senior mechanical technician checked our water flow valves and found that we were losing 100 gallons per minute (gpm)  This told us that we had leak in our water main somewhere.  After some more investigation, we found water pouring into one of the communication vaults and water in a waterline key hole.  This water was draining thru a drainpipe in the communication vault into our storm drain system. 

We closed the water main valve and it stopped the leak.  Closing this valve also shut off the water for all of the lakeside buildings and JRP.

CBJ water department will be on camps Friday morning with some equipment that will help narrow down the location of the water leak.  

We contacted Admiralty Construction to see if they a crew who could come repair our water line.  Those of you who remember our last waterline leak a few years back, Admiralty Construction were very prompt in helping us repair the waterline.  They said they have a crew they can pull off another project and work on our emergency repair.  Their supervisor will be on site Friday morning also and will come up with a plan on where to start digging.

Until we dig up the pipe and find the leak, we will not know what parts are needed to repair the leak. 

There are several pipe and connections currently available in Juneau.  If those parts are, enough we should be able to restore water service by Monday or Tuesday.  However, if we need to fly parts up from Seattle then this could delay the repair until the end of next week.  Cross your fingers……

UAS Community

The UAS Shuttle Bus Service will be extended until May 12, 2017

 This will provide service during Finals Week and give us time to figure out how many people will still need the service over the summer semester.

 As a reminder, the DOT&PF highway project has closed pedestrian and bicycle access to the Anderson Building.  Those wishing to get to the Anderson Building need to take the UAS Shuttle Bus.  Bicyclists will need to lock their bikes on campus and take the Shuttle Bus.

The UAS shuttle makes a loop around campus and stops at the Anderson building about every 30  minutes.  We have received a couple of comments in regards to busses not running on schedule.  We will be working with our bus provider, First-Student, to improve service. Please visit the UAS shuttle bus web page for more information, including a neat shuttle tracker map that shows you exactly where the shuttle bus is right now. http://www.uas.alaska.edu/juneau/shuttle.html

Thank You or your patience.

Nathan Leigh

UAS Community

Pedestrian route to the UAS Anderson building is changing starting Friday April 14, 2017.

DOT&PF and their contractor SECON are starting construction of the Glacier Highway reconstruction project and need to close off the sidewalk that leads to the Anderson Building.  This means there will be no walking access to the Anderson Building.  You can still get to the Anderson building using the UAS shuttle service or by automobile. This change in pedestrian access is expected to last most of the summer.

Please follow all construction signs and directions given by flaggers.  Construction sites are dangerous places and we do not want any of our UAS community to get hurt.

The UAS shuttle makes a loop around campus and stops at the Anderson building about every 30  minutes.  Please visit the UAS shuttle bus web page for more information, including a neat shuttle tracker map that shows you exactly where the shuttle bus is right now. http://www.uas.alaska.edu/juneau/shuttle.html

The Department of Transportation and Public Facilities posts construction notices on their Alaska Navigator web page  http://www.alaskanavigator.org/   or by calling  511 automated phone service.

Construction updates specific to UAS are posted to the UAS Facilities Construction Update webpage   http://www.uas.alaska.edu/facilities_services/fpc/const-update.html

All of these sites give you the option to subscribe to a feed that will notify you every time there is an update.

Road Construction 2017

The Department of Transportation and Public Facilities will be rebuilding Glacier Highway from Fritz Cove Road to Seaview Ave.  Their contractor SECON has already started preparatory work and in the coming weeks will have a full road crew working from 7am to 5pm, Monday through Saturday.  The contractor will post weekly updates to their  website www.fritztoseaview.com  and Facebook page  SECON Glacier Hwy Reconstruction Fritz Cove Rd to Seaview Ave.  

Work during the 2017 season will only be taking place between Auke Lake and the Auke Bay Roundabout, work between the roundabout and Seaview Ave. will take place in 2018. (See drawing for clarification)