Work dragging on at UH lab building
By Jennifer Hiller
Advertiser Education Writer
It was supposed to vault University of Hawai'i science into the 21st century.
Gregory Yamamoto • The Honolulu Advertiser
At this point, though, professors who have waited eight years to work in laboratories in one of the university's most advanced buildings would settle for hobbling belatedly into the new millennium.
Construction vehicles still come and go at the POST laboratory building, eight years after construction began at the UH site.
The Pacific Ocean Science and Technology Center was once touted as a recruiting and retention tool to lure scientists who pull in big-money federal projects. The idea was to give them a modern facility, with views of Diamond Head and the Pacific Ocean from the upper floors, where top-notch research would flourish.
But the project is unfinished, $15 million beyond its initial budget and three years behind schedule.
Partially occupied since 1998, the building remains months from completion and stands as a symbol of lost time, missed opportunities and the inevitable erosion of staff morale as a long-promised facility has failed to materialize.
Faculty members, forced to wait for the completion of valuable laboratory space in the basement and on the sixth floor, say they have stopped pursuing some grants because they do not have the space or lab time to finish projects on time.
Faculty have moved into six of the eight floors, but the basement, two floors and a laboratory on the sixth floor are still under construction. The first floor, one of the unfinished areas of the building, greets entering students and employees with a maze of pipes and cords on the exposed ceiling, pink insulation, caution tape and plywood doors.
"When it's finally finished it will be great," said Barry Raleigh, dean of the School of Ocean and Earth Science Technology. But, he adds, "I'm not going to hold my breath."
A difficult building
State and university officials say the POST building was difficult to design and build because of the laboratory requirements.
In the time the POST center has been under construction, UH has gotten financing for and completed other large projects, notably an addition to Hamilton Library and the Center for Biogenesis Research.
Allan Ah San, UH associate vice president for administration, said the project isn't like the others on campus, and comparisons are unfair.
"The buildings are quite different in how they're being used," he said. "It's one of the most sophisticated buildings in the state."
Kathleen Cutshaw, director of administration for School of Ocean and Earth Science Technology, blames the delays on the layers of state bureaucracy. She has never found one person she can contact about the building.
"It's disruptive for the scientists," Cutshaw said. "They don't get federal funds unless they produce. Their future is dependent on these labs running."
Construction started in 1993, but the state ran out of money halfway through the project. Officials blamed the mishap on inflation and delays that came in building the complex laboratories. Instead of making the building smaller, though, four floors were essentially left as vacant shells.
Meanwhile, the initial $40 million price tag climbed to nearly $55 million to complete the POST center.
The federal government had provided $20 million of the original cost, with the state providing the other $20 million. But since 1998, when the first occupants moved into the partially completed building, the state has shouldered the full cost of construction.
One contract, for $11.7 million, went to construction of the first floor and a laboratory in the basement. Another, worth $2.4 million, went to the completion of the fourth floor.
On the sixth floor, a third contract went for a "clean lab" that would cost $700,000. After a series of blunders over three years, it is in its third round of construction.
The POST center also has been cursed by the volume of contractors working to complete it in piecemeal fashion. As money slowly became available, the state put parts of the building out for competitive bidding.
The result: four contractors.
"It's been a long project," Ah San said. "Coordination has been difficult when you consider the original contractor and subsequently three more phases."
Each contractor has had to learn the air-conditioning, plumbing and electrical wiring systems — installed by others — from scratch.
"You stop and shut down and you crank it up again. There's a lot of time that's spent going through the motions," Ah San said. "It's a learning curve."
The chilling effect
The nonstop construction has wreaked havoc on the building's air-conditioning system. On a recent summer afternoon, it was 66 degrees in John Mahoney's office. In the winter, it's chillier. Many professors bring sweaters or have portable space heaters to keep them warm.
"The good thing is that the students in the classrooms don't fall asleep," said Mahoney, the professor of geology and geophysics. "They're frozen solid."
Mahoney has waited years to work in the sixth-floor lab.
"The summary of the whole situation is millions of dollars are being wasted and nobody is accountable," Mahoney said. "We're all very discouraged."
UH has another clean lab in the Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics, but it was built in 1987 and is too small to accommodate all the scientists who need to use it. The new clean lab, which UH officials say would be on the cutting edge if built properly, would be used for inorganic chemistry research by geologists and geophysicist trying to better understand the solar system and interior of the earth.
Scientists would use the facility to measure small amounts of minerals, rocks and atmospheric dust. The work requires a pure environment so precise measurements aren't thrown off by trace particles of minerals founds in dust.
In search of pure air
The laboratory needs to have highly filtered air and positive pressure relative to the outside so that dust particles will not be sucked in. It also requires an absence of metal pipes and ducts because they corrode during chemistry experiments.
Instead, when the isotope lab was finished the first time, the scientists found metal and dust everywhere. All of the installed furniture and pipes had to be torn out so work could start again. Construction went through a second round with similar results.
"We've built the lab three times," said Khalil Spencer, associate specialist in geology and geophysics. "We're still not sure the room is going to meet specs. Every nook and cranny is full of gypsum dust the last time I looked."
Gordon Matsuoka, public works administrator for the Department of Accounting and General Services, said the isotope laboratory is nearly finished, though.
"It's basically cleaning up now," he said. "We'll be testing the lab in a few weeks."
Other lab problems persist. When scientists in other POST center labs need deionized water for experiments and research, they tote jugs of it from the neighboring building. POST's deionized water systems have never worked.
The latest contract calls for all work to be finished by the end of the year. The first and fourth floors, which consist of classrooms and offices, could be ready by the fall. The more difficult work involved in the lab in the basement wouldn't be finished until December.
The prospect of a completed building by the end of the year is unbelievable for some who have watched its glacial progress.
"We're going to have a heck of a party when we're done," Cutshaw said.
Spencer isn't sticking around to find out, though. "I've thrown up my hands," he said. "Unless somebody takes charge, I just see more of the same." He will leave UH this summer for a job with the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
