The completion of the new Feringa Building at the Faculty of Science and Engineering has suffered another delay. The first groups won’t be able to move in until the summer of 2023. This means the final date of completion has moved, as well.
The delay isn’t entirely news, admits Esther Marije Klop, faculty board member at the Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE). ‘We’d known for a while that we wouldn’t make it before the summer. What’s changed is that we’ve now accepted the inevitability of the delay.’
Various little things ultimately led to the delay. Several employees at the construction company came down with Covid. There were issues with the supply of materials, last-minute changes in the design, and a large turnover at the construction company.
This also means that construction on the second section of the Feringa Building won’t start until later, which means the completion date has moved. The building was supposed to be finished in two years, but now it won’t be done until 2025.
Bad news
This is bad news for a faculty that’s been increasingly suffering from a lack of room. The faculty wants to grow to have eight thousand students, but even after the Feringa Building is completed, this would leave them with a lack of room comprising ten thousand square metres.
Klop therefore wants the board of directors to guarantee that the sections of Nijenborgh 4 that don’t need to be torn down to make way for new builds actually stay up. ‘I think everything will be fine’, she says. Earlier, the board acknowledged that the faculty would need extra room if it grew to have eight thousand students.
Practicum spaces
In the meantime, Klop is forever searching for new practicum spaces for students. ‘We had to move some things around in our own building, but we managed to create a few more labs with fume hoods’, she says. The print facilities also moved to make way for rooms with fume hoods.
However, there is currently nothing left to move. The UG hasn’t been able to rent lab spaces elsewhere because they’re too far away to bike to from Zernike, or there are issues concerning the safe transport of dangerous chemical substances.
The university is currently talking to the Hanze University of Applied Sciences about using their spaces. Klop: ‘We don’t know for sure whether that will work out, but we don’t know that it won’t work out, either.’