Kim Gibson makes sure the CBLS project negotiates its utility maze successfully

By RUDI HEMPE
CELS News Editor & Reporter

The Center for Biotechnology and Life Sciences building is now wrapped up in plastic to keep out wintry blasts but inside there is a flurry of activity as various trades install myriad utility lines to service the many labs, classrooms and offices in the new building.

Visitors who are allowed inside the research wing (the building that lies parallel to Flagg Road) can see where all the walls for labs, offices and rest rooms will be positioned someday but what is even more impressive lies overhead.

There, especially in the passageways that someday will be corridors, is a jungle of pipes, conduits and ducts. The array doesn't look like an explosion in a spaghetti factory-the workmanship is far too neat and precise-but the complexity, installed in very tight spaces, is impressive.

Whoever is in charge of overseeing that every pipe, every duct is positioned just right and is installed in the proper sequence obviously has to be on the ball and that person is 29-year-old Kim Gibson, the only woman currently working on the $60-million project site.

Gibson is the mechanical coordinator/superintendent for the Gilbane Building Company. As such she is responsible to make sure all the utilities are installed in the right order according to a complex schedule and even more complex plans.

"I love it," says Gibson who tends to smile a lot as she describes her job.

Although she is a young woman, she comes to the CBLS with some interesting credentials.

For Gibson, the road that led to URI's largest building project to date started at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.

She hails from a close-knit family in Fairhaven that was always on the water, sailing. "I grew up on boats," she says. There are commercial fishermen in her extended family too.

"I wanted to be a ship's captain someday," she says explaining why she chose the Massachusetts Maritime Academy located on Buzzards Bay.

As a freshman in the four-year school she had to do a host of jobs, many of them dirty and tough, on an old banana ship that the school used for training the students.

One of those jobs was working in the engine room.

"I fell in love with the engine room," she says laughing. "I loved the heat, the smell and the hard work."

Four years later she was graduated with a degree in facilities engineering.

After school she worked for three years as maintenance manager for the Providence School Department. Gilbane had some contracts with the school system and she got to know some of the Gilbane workers. For awhile she joked with them whether they had any openings and then one day she decided to apply. A month later, Gilbane hired her. She worked for a month on the training school project in Cranston and then was sent down to her current position at CBLS.

The Massachusetts Maritime Academy had an enrollment of 1,000 students but only 80 were female. That was an experience that prepared her well for her current job at CBLS which right now has 99.9 percent male workers on site.

In the construction business "Its tough being a female," she says. "It's tough to be a young female." But she is quick to add about the men she works with, "I'm learning from them. As much as I help them, they help me. If you respect them, they respect you. It's tough but at the same time I find it easy to work with the men."

A typical 10-hour day (not counting her commute to and from Fairhaven where she lives) starts will checking the e-mails and the day's schedule. She then hits every floor of the new building -the research wing with its complexity is considerably ahead of the teaching wing right now. All of the trades-mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire suppression-are given a schedule and plans by Gilbane but it is up to her to make sure they are followed.

The spaces in the CBLS for utility lines are quite tight and the sequence of installations has to be followed precisely otherwise one trade's workers will be in conflict with another trade's. Gibson also has to check delivery of materials to make sure what is delivered meets the design specs.

She has her share of weekly meetings to attend but she says she really enjoys being on the site, not in an office. "I like to be in the field where the work is, not behind a desk."

When she is not working, she enjoys her close-knit family in Fairhaven. Her father is an electrician. "He's very proud of me," she says. Her spare time is spent with her family and her boyfriend.

Gibson says she expects to be on the CBLS project until the very end, less than a year from now. That will be crunch time because toward the end of the project all of the utilities that are being installed now on her watch will have to work properly. In a laboratory building there is some very specialized gear involved.

"I'll be here until the bitter end," she says smiling, although chances are it will not be bitter at all. She is looking forward to a sense of accomplishment and then on to another assignment.

"It's been good to be in a place where you are appreciated," she says of the job and her employer. "It makes you want to work harder."

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