Facilities Management and Housing and Dining Programs are working together to take the first steps in addressing a rash of elevator outages affecting Letts Hall South this semester.
Both elevators in Letts South have experienced 22 separate problems since Jan. 1 of this year, but budgeting and extensive planning will delay any immediate large improvements on the system.
“Housing and Dining Programs has made several attempts to address the Letts elevator issue by notifying Facilities Management of the problem,” Sophia Benedicktus, assistant director of Operations for Housing and Dining, said in an e-mail.
Facilities Management is looking into fixing the elevators, which they said have several problems.
“There’s some major components that need work,” said William Suter, the director of Facilities Management.
Facilities Management must complete the engineering of the project before knowing what impact the renovation will have on the building. The office must design plans and then select a contractor who will bid to restore the elevators.
This planning process could take as long as seven months, meaning no one will be working in Letts elevator shafts for some time, according to Suter.
Elevators are in much higher demand in dorms than in other types of buildings, according to Suter. This causes the elevators’ components to wear out faster than elevators with more typical usage.
Suter has worked at AU for 16 years and has seen replacements of cables, main computer software and door controllers, but he has yet to see complete renovation of the elevators.
Elevator renovations cannot be contracted until a comprehensive package is created, which would detail all the repairs and changes to be made to the elevator system.
“Sometimes we get surprised, and we have to re-think things,” Suter said. “So right now we have money programmed out to do that study and to write the contract documents.”
The project to physically repair the elevators could take about nine months to complete, according to Suter.
The renovations will take long enough that Facilities Management is coordinating with Housing and Dining to determine when the project will cause the least amount of disruption to students in the residence halls, he said.
Facilities Management would like to fix the elevator problem as much as the residents do, Suter said.
“It’s less of a pain in the neck for [Facilities personell] because we don’t get trapped in the elevator,” Suter said. “But it’s as much of a pain for us to have problems on a regular basis, so we’re ready to get after this as well.”
Facilities Management plans to complete some renovations in Anderson Hall this summer, followed by renovations in McDowell Hall next summer and renovations in Letts during summer 2012, according to Suter.
You can reach this staff writer at amooney@theeagleonline.com.
