Renovation of West Ambler Johnston

The great thing about West Ambler Johnston, also known as "The WAJ" or "West AJ", is that I spent my whole freshman year in it.  To walk past it now and to see Barton Malow Construction Inc renovate the building just makes me miss my freshman home.

 The residential hall is 8 stories tall, 272 019 sqaure foot and can occupy about 800 Virginia Tech students.  The building was first built in 1967, but was not fully completed until 1969.  West AJ consists of one men's and one women's bathroom, lounge, and a study room per floor.

My first visit back to West AJ since freshman year was not as long as I wanted it to be.  The lively dorm I remember was completely dead.  The weather was really poor and it was raining throughout my whole visit.  There were a lot of companies there, but it seemed like everyone was sitting in their construction vehicles.  The only person that was really doing work was an employee from Handy John and Construction.  He was by himself cleaning out all the portable toilets that were on site.

Here are some notes I took while I was on the site.   I also took the liberty to look up what some of these subcontractors specialized in and where they were from.

        

Unfortunately, my camera's memory was full and i could not take additional pictures without deleting previous site visits collections.  Other things that intrigued me were the equipment that was being used on site. Some of the equipment included:

Skid-steer loader(1), sky trak (2), spec mixer (3), trench compactor (4), track excavator (5), and compact wheel loader(6).  There were other smaller equipment laying around, such as hammers, ladders, air compressors, and a very impressive scaffolding system around the building.

Bobcat Compact Loader                             Bobcat skid-steer loader                    

   Bobcat excavator                                                        

These pictures were taken off of the the bobcat website (www.bobcat.com) just to illustrate to readers that are unsure of what these machines look like.  The picture of the machines also explain the most common uses for the machines.  

    

Skytrak machine.                           Trench Compactor
(www.skytrack.com)                  (www.constructionequipment.com)

My site visit will continue onto another day when I receive conformation from Barton Malow that I am allowed to be on the site.  I will have to set up an appointment and visit West AJ another day.

I hope you enjoyed the blog and all the best
Mic