As many students, staff and faculty find themselves back on campus and walking a familiar path to classrooms and offices, one area that has undergone significant change is the site of the Destination Project.

With over 135,000 cubic meters of dirt removed from the site, the future home of the $260 million science and academic building is well on its way to taking shape on the horizon of the U of L campus. The process of the dirt removal involved over 8,000 truckloads which took place over the entirety of the summer with a few more still to come.

The removal of all of that dirt means that site grading is now complete which has made way for structural work to take shape. This milestone will see an addition in workers and equipment on site. Program Director, Brian Sullivan says as the project moves through construction, extra caution should be taken by everyone on campus to ensure their safety.

“At our peak, we have around 350 construction workers on site in addition to project management staff, so there’s going to be some extra traffic around campus. As the semester starts up, there’ll be an adjustment period for everyone, so we just ask that people have a little more patience with things like parking and traffic as the build moves forward,” says Sullivan.

One of the other major milestones, which can be seen on the live webcam views, is the pouring of the concrete floor. This process has already begun and will involve over 120 truckloads of concrete coming to campus a day, and pumping concrete for several continuous hours to create the base layer of the building’s floor. While the intensity level of work will only happen for eight to 10 days over the next two months, the end result will be a concrete floor base of 8,000 cubic meters.

If you’ve missed seeing the project site change gradually over the past few months, take a look at these incredible aerial photos (above) of the site. These photos were taken earlier this spring and show how much the Destination Project site has changed in just a few short months. See the site live here.

Find out more about the new home and hub of science in southern Alberta at destinationproject.ca.