Wednesday, June 29, 2011

That's Done

First of all, go NOW to the video section of this site and check out the 190+ feet of shelving rolling on I forget how many railroad tracks.  The construction of our new shelving system is complete!  There may be a few odds and ends to wrap up, but for the most part Spacesaver has come through on time and on budget.  Thanks to Mark, Dave, and John (from Spacesaver), and Warren and all the guys from Martin Horn Construction as well as the many, many subcontractors that put this thing together with minimal drama and stress.  A toast to your good work.

So now on with the task of putting all this new shelving to use.  We need a couple of weeks to iron out any bugs in the system, clean the place up a little bit, test the fire suppression system, and prepare for the stage of accessioning our materials into the renovated facility.   We need computers in the building, hand held scanners, mobile computers, bar codes for the shelf openings, shelf height labels, shelf location labels, printers, no doubt other things (do we need a fax machine?) and a schedule for delivering boxes of stuff to Ivy Stacks.  And all of this before the week of July 18 when we will have training on how to place trays of books into the shelves with some hope of finding them again.  But this whole project has gotten this far without too many bumps in the road so I am optimistic we can meet the next challenge.  Right?  And one more thing, we need to start folding trays. 

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Construction Phase Just About Done

It's been a few weeks since I last blogged about the project and a lot has been done in that time.  The shelving construction is just about complete.  Spacesaver and the Rack Pros erected the shelving in three stages starting at the back of the warehouse.  They are now completing the third module.  Work space is pretty tight in the warehouse now but the guys seem to be managing pretty well.  Hopefully they will be done by June 30, 2011 then there are numerous inspections involving the sprinkler system and various alarms.  In early July any final details will be attended to (the 'punch list').  We can then begin to accession materials back into the facility with the helpful guidance of our newest best friend Christine Brennan from Generation Fifth Associates. 

In the meantime we have a great crew working on bar coding and pre-sorting as much stuff as we can.  We'll have  plenty of items ready to be trayed and shelved as soon as we can get into the door of the new Ivy Stacks. 

I almost hate to keep saying this but so far so good.