The Feringa Building’s chemists are forced to return to Nijenborgh 4. The alarm system is still not functioning properly, which means the fume hoods cannot be used.
Last week, it seemed like the first fume hoods would soon be operational. The building management system needed to be adjusted to clearly show what the installations were doing and how to intervene. However, this week it became apparent that the issue is still unresolved.
‘This means that, at this moment, there is still no certainty about the timeline or the restart of research in the laboratories’, the university board told the researchers at the Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE). ‘The crisis team and we understand that this unfortunate news will cause dismay among all involved.’
Disheartened
Professor of polymer chemistry Katja Loos is dejected. ‘We don’t know what they are doing. People come into our lab, they measure something, but we don’t understand it.’
Her team is busy packing their things for the umpteenth time. ‘I had hoped to tell them that they could return in two weeks. That I could say: take it easy for two weeks.’
Director Moniek Tromp of the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials wasn’t particularly surprised by the news. ‘We’ve been hearing about all sorts of timelines for two years’, she says. ‘And not one has been met. But at the same time, it’s also very dramatic because it’s been a crisis since July, and we still haven’t made any progress.’
Complexity
A major problem is the complexity of the operation, Tromp explains. ‘All the layers of decision-making and all the companies involved. A lot gets lost in communication. It’s not understood everywhere, all the way up to the highest level.’
When the directors heard the news, they had had enough. ‘We walked into the board of governors and said: we need clarity on how to move forward.’ The good news, Tromp believes, is that there is now a crisis team that meets daily and closely monitors the companies responsible for delivering.
Because the researchers have to vacate their temporary locations in the practical labs as classes resume, the old labs in Nijenborgh 4 are being reinstated where possible. ‘I think we can create enough space this way. We really need a long-term solution, at least until the end of the year.’