Construction Review 2.0

At least more than once, you must have thought “what’s that shiny new building” or “what’s being constructed here”. Naturally, after an exhilarating 2 years of being away from campus and then a semester here, we see that there are a lot of new buildings and ongoing construction. The people who’ve been on the campus since before the pandemic can surely tell that it does seem a bit different.

To clear your curiosities about it all, we reviewed the previous constructions and took note of new ones. Though we did our groundwork pretty comprehensively, it’s possible that we missed some minor constructions. So, continuing on our last review in 2020, we embark on the journey once again!

Diamond Jubilee Academic Complex

The “NCL 2.0”, as we called it two years back, was under construction for the last three years. Its name was recently revealed when it was inaugurated on 20th April by Dr. Radhakrishnan (Chairperson, BoG, IITK). The 109 crore cost of the building justifies its size – a massive carpet area of 35,000 square meters, which is roughly the same as 5 football fields! It is now the largest academic building on campus by far – even the purpose of a lot of the building rooms hasn’t been decided yet!

The complex is 5 storeys, and would have various labs for UGs and PGs, lecture halls, and would also function as the department building for the Deptt of Design and the Deptt of Sustainable Energy Engineering.

Science and Technology Building

In between the NCL and the Flight Lab, the construction of the Science & Technology Building is in progress. (with no relation to the SnT Council :P)

The construction started in October 2020; and was expected to end this winter. However, COVID and lockdowns brought many halts to the work, and this 5-story building is now expected to be ready with all amenities by Diwali 2022. The project costs a little over 58 crores which includes BMS, water supply, sanitary installation, lifts, fire alarms, and PA systems.

Research Lab Complex

Adjacent to the site of the S&T Building, another construction is going on. Yes, you guessed it right, another research building! This one, called the Research Lab Complex, has been under work since April 2021 and is aiming for completion by the start of 2023. The project cost is estimated to be under 75 crores, including amenities like plumbing, sewage system, electrical works, fire alarms, lift, PA system, and a Building Management System (BMS) for centralized management of the infrastructure.

3 floors have been constructed till March 2022. If the current pace of construction isn’t disrupted, we’ll surely have many more research labs by the turn of the year.

Earth Science Labs Building

As we go ahead from the TechnoPark Building towards the Flight Lab, we come across a towering 7-floor construction nearing completion. This building is the Earth Science Labs Building. It has been under construction for the last 3 years, but due to COVID setbacks, the work hasn’t been completed yet. The work was fully halted from March to June 2020 due to COVID. The fully furnished building is expected to be handed over to the institute in the next 2-3 months. The project cost is estimated to be nearly 19.7 Crore rupees.

Aerospace Department Building

Across the road from the IME building, we have the Aerospace Department building that is nearing its completion, and by the time of this article’s publishing, might be handed over to the institute in under 2 months. It is a 7-floored building, including ground, along with a basement. As usual, this building was to be completed by end of 2020 but hasn’t been fully furnished even now. We can only assume that the delay in the construction was not only due to the pandemic, but also some other factors.

Now, being handed over, the building is nearly done up with plumbing, sewage, electrical works, fire fighting systems, CCTV systems, etc., and its cost sums up to just below 58 crores.

Core Labs Extension

Well, you can’t call every new lab building “New Core Labs”, right? Hence this one is called Core Labs Extension. Adjacent to the Materials Sciences Labs, ACES building, and the DoAA Canteen, the construction on this site was projected to end in April 2020 itself, but it’s still not inaugurated. Though out of the listed buildings not inaugurated yet, this would probably be the first.

As is evident, the building would provide more labs, mostly for the core departments such as MSE, CHE, CHM, etc. The construction is of 4 floors, including ground, and its estimated cost is about 10 crore rupees.

Faculty Building Annexe

That large building you see being built from the porch of CCD, or the skywalk near the Library? That’s the Faculty Building Annexe. Google would help you with what ‘Annexe’ means. (It helped us too :P)

The project manager tells us that this building would provide for the new offices of the administrative faculty, i.e. the Director, Deputy Director, most of the Deans, and also various other professors. The construction started while most of us were at our homes, and without any doubt, it has been rapid – the fully-functional building would be handed back to the institute tentatively before the end of this year. The tender cost of this 6-floor complex is roughly Rs. 31 crores.

Hall 14

We also have a new hostel coming up! The location of Hall 14 lies beyond Hall 13, on the diagonal road. Although we do not know much about the tender and the contract, the buildings are supposed to be handed over by January 2023, though delays might shift the deadline to the end of the even semester of 2022-23.

Also, just like Hall 13 with A-B-C blocks being functional even before the blocks D-E-F were fully constructed, there’s a possibility that Hall 14 would also be built in parts, with one-half being functional even before 2023. Well, aren’t we excited!

Reporting and written by: Sanika Gumaste, Ayush Anand, and Bhavya Sikarwar

Design by: Vijay Bharadwaj

Edited by: Devansh Parmar