Construction of the Faraday II science building is progressing smoothly and on schedule.

The projected completion date remains the fall semester of 1994. The construction of the 115,000-gross square foot building began on July 15, 1992.

Faraday II will expand housing for science departments, which will allow for more sophisticated equipment.

Patricia Perkins, assistant to the vice president of Finance and Planning, said C. Iber and Sons of East Peoria, the contractor doing the work, has done a great job so far.

“They worked through the winter which really helped to keep the project on schedule,” Perkins said. “They are a very fine company.”

Tony Giorgio, project manager for C. Iber and Sons, said the weather in the early part of winter allowed them to work smoothly but lately has not been cooperative.

“The cold, bad weather came at a very critical time in the process of pouring the concrete,” Giorgio said. “It became too cold so we had to postpone the concrete pouring for a while.”

He said they will have to make up the time lost from the bad weather at a later time in the construction, when the weather is warmer.

“We really haven’t had any unusual snags. The only problems have been with the weather so far,” he said.

C. Iber and Sons will be sharing the same staging area as the contractor that will be building the campus parking structure.

Construction of the campus parking structure is scheduled to begin in April.

Giorgio said the sharing of the staging area will be a big problem for both companies.

“There is not adequate parking as it is, so we’re going to have to come up with a solution,” he said.

“We are considering taking a portion of the engineering building site and using it as parking for workers from the Faraday project, the parking structure project and the engineering project,” he said.

Both Perkins and Giorgio said NIU and C. Iber and Sons have been able to work very well together, which has helped contribute to the smoothness of the project thus far.