Building Bulletin 12th March 2012

BUILDING BULLETIN #5

12^th March 2012

Anyone who has taken a peek at the building work going on in the Senior School will appreciate how much progress has been made in the last couple of months.  Difficulties were encountered around Christmas time but Midland has worked hard to achieve a situation where not only has it caught up, now it is actually a couple of weeks ahead of schedule.  This is particularly important given that the completion date is 27 August which does not leave any room for unexpected delays.

We are anticipating that the Senior Boys School will be ready for occupation during the June Bank Holiday weekend.  If this happens it will be great as those in 6^th class will get a chance to spend a couple of weeks in the new classrooms before moving on to secondary school.  The final phase of works involves some complex rearranging of the current layout on the old corridors of the Junior Boys School.  We need as much time as possible for this but starting work during term time will mean quite an amount of moving as well.  Both Schools will be organizing meitheals and we will be asking you to help out if you can.

The Government mandates that 1% of every public sector construction project be devoted to an arts initiative.  Both Schools established an art subcommittee which has been working away at implementing a procurement process which will be for the benefit of the two schools. Selection of artists is currently underway and we hope to able to announce the results of this process in our next update.

Traffic management continues to be a challenge.  We would again ask everyone to keep cars away from the immediate vicinity of the schools if at all possible.  The residents in Vernon Court and our other neighbours along Seafield Road have been very understanding of the disruption caused by the building project.  We all need to continue to do what we can to minimise that disruption for them.

Minister Richard Bruton and other public representatives visited the Schools recently.  The purpose was to inform them about the project so they could see the good use to which public money is being put.  We gave a presentation outlining the history of the project, the procurement process, how implementation has gone and what still remains to be done to achieve a successful completion.  We also shared some ideas on lessons which might benefit future projects.

In less than a month the Easter holidays will start and after that we will be in the Summer term.  There is still a considerable amount of work to be done but if we continue with hard work and a spirit of co-operation we are hopeful that we will have a successful on time completion in August.  That would mean that we would have a transformed School campus in time for the next School year starting in early September.

Kevin Hoy      Tim O’Mahony          Frankie Byrne            John O’Sullivan