After months of broken promises and altered deadlines, Student Union officials are telling students they will have to continue being patient as final touches to Phase I of the construction process are finished.Though Union officials are still looking for an early spring semester opening, they no longer expect new facilities to be open for the beginning of the semester. The much altered deadline now favors late January or early February over the previously announced date at the beginning of the spring semester.Though there have been no new drastic delays since deadlines were last reported, officials and contractors have been forced to extend the time frame for completion of the first phase. Past difficulties have kept contractors consistently behind.During the long course of construction, students and administrators have become frustrated with the delays keeping the process behind schedule. While there is a long list of details explaining the delays, the most consistently cited explanation is the sheer size and complexity of the workload.”We all underestimated how complicated the project would be,” said Ken Bueche, Union associate director.Because the Union has remained open throughout the construction process, concerns for student safety have made it impossible to open new pieces of the building while others are still being renovated.Before the new student common area on the first floor, the Live Oak Lounge, can be opened, three new exits must be finished to facilitate fire code regulations related to the increase in maximum human capacity that comes with the new facilities. Without these new exits, the fire marshal will not approve the opening of any new pieces of the Union.”It is very difficult to get a fire marshal to bless just portions of even a new building,” said Randy Roussell, Union project engineer. “At the end of the day, it’s the fire marshal we have to deal with.”Though there has been progress getting the exits completed this semester, the steel door-frames still must be fireproofed, the glass window-walls need to be installed and the concrete paths leading to the doors are only partially poured.”The contractors are pretty stressed out,” Bueche said. “There is a lot of pressure on them to get the Live Oak Lounge open, so they’re pushing pretty hard for it.”Since the beginning of construction almost two years ago, difficulties with the building’s air handling system have been the most serious roadblocks to progress.Of the original 30 air handling units in the building, all but three will have to be removed and replaced before the end of construction. Inconsistencies with the original blueprints and the actual location of many air ducts have also slowed the contractors’ progress.”I’m surprised they could even build this building with the original blueprints,” said Joe Jody, Union project manager and director for quality control for Grace and Herbert Architects. Though original plans for Phase I did not call for a complete overhaul of the building’s air handling system this early in the construction process, this semester’s delays may cut construction time further down the line.The constant movement of deadlines has irritated students already cynical of the construction process. Questions have been raised about the competency of the contractors and their commitment to the project.”I still believe the contractors can do more to get this project done sooner and better,” said Student Government President Colorado Robertson. “I’ve talked with the administration, and they are disgruntled with the contractors, too.”But some Union officials were ready to defend the contractors and the work they have done. While no one is satisfied with missed deadlines and revised schedules, many of the delays were unforeseeable and had to be dealt with as they arose.”As far as I can tell, they’ve been doing everything they can to get construction moving along,” Bueche said. “It was just a very complicated project.”—-Contact Adam Duvernay at [email protected]