Technicalities in the process for building and renovating dormitories could put a hold on various projects, perpetuating a lack of housing for students, said Residential Life Director Steve Waller.
Waller said East Laville is going to be finished in fall 2012, and Residential College North is scheduled to be finished in fall 2015 because of technicalities.
Residential College North was packaged with the business and engineering dorms but had to be set aside because the project was too expensive to be completed at one time.
The five-year process for building new dorms or renovating existing dorms is lengthy because of the steps to get the buildings approved, and that will force an increasing number of students to look for housing elsewhere while the department waits, Waller said.
If a project costs more than $500,000 and ResLife does not have the money, state law requires the plans to go through the five-year capital outlay process for approval.
The first step of the approval process is submitting the plans for the next legislative session, which is always in May, Waller said. They are then given to the Board of Supervisors, which takes two to three months to approve the plans.
After they have been approved, the plans go to the Board of Regents, which keeps information of how much square footage is used for what, Waller said.
The plans then go through the Facility Planning and Control division of the state Department of Administration and are submitted to the state Legislature after, Waller said. The Legislature either chooses to approve or deny the plans.
“This process takes over a year, and then we look for an architect to design the building,” Waller said.
The architect district representatives that make up the Architect Selection Board take about three months to find architects and vote. The University has one vote, Facility Planning and Control has two and each of the representatives in the Architect Selection Board have one vote.
Two months are spent making the contract, and one and a half to two years are spent designing the building, Waller said. Three to four months before construction bids, the University goes to the state system to sell bonds to receive bond commission, which helps to pay for the new building.
After ResLife accepts a bid, construction begins and lasts from 14 to 16 months, Waller said. The complete process totals around five years.
West Laville had to go through this five-year process and about $50 million was spent on its renovations, Waller said.
“The approval levels [for construction funding] are too small to be effective. … They hamper timely construction because of the requirement for oversight,” Waller said. “I think it should be at least $1 million, but that’s a legislative decision.”
To combat this, ResLife can use an Act 959, a two-year process that can bypass approval from the state Legislature and go to the Joint Legislative Committee if the project costs between $500,000 and $5 million, Waller said.
Small capital projects less than $500,000 in cost do not require legislative approval and only take four months to go through the Board of Supervisors and the Board of Regents.
Small capital projects are the most completed on campus. Recent small capital projects include renovations of the bathrooms in Jackson Hall, newly painted walls in Annie Boyd Hall and a new roof on West Laville Hall is coming soon, Waller said.
ResLife also sets aside 10 percent of the money paid per year by students who live in the dorms, which amounts to $3 million, Waller said.
Waller said he has a “four pillars” policy for spending the designated $3 million  on small renovations and improvements to dorms. The pillars are infrastructure, upgrades and improvements, furniture, and safety and security.
“I like to call it a ‘big elephant,'” Waller said. “We have to nibble off one piece at a time.”
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Contact Meredith Will at [email protected]