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The Dartmouth
July 14, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Behind the scenes of construction

From conception to construction, the process of erecting a new building on the Dartmouth campus is long and onerous.

Director of Facilities Planning Gordie DeWitt said the ultimate authority in most projects lies with the College's Board of Trustees and the College President, whoapprove the funding for a project and the selection of an architect.

The first step in the process is pickinga project for construction.

DeWitt said ideas for construction may come from a number of sources, including students, faculty and administrators.

In order to accommodate the broad spectrum of ideas, the Facilities Work Group, an informal committee, meets weekly to examine different groups' perspectives.

He said the group members discuss the needs of different groups before sending high-priority projects for formal approval to the Facilities Advisory Committee, a group that makes final recommendations about what projects should be funded.

The 11-member committee includes DeWitt, Deputy Provost Bruce Pipes, Associate Treasurer Win Johnson and representatives from the College and the graduate schools.

According to DeWitt, authority over projects of different prices is allocated to various organizations. The Facilities Advisory Committee approves small projects, the Provost's Council approves larger projects, and very large projects must be approved by a subcommittee of the Trustees, he said.

Projects costing greater than one million dollars must be approved by the Trustees in full, he said.

Once a project is approved, Major Gifts begins raising funds.

Director of Major Gifts Paul Sheff said the fund-raising process entails identifying people with an interest in the project and the resources to contribute.

Using the example of Berry Library, Sheff said "Dartmouth maintains relations with its alums, and the idea is to try to determine which of those people might have an interest either because they have an interest in rare books, or archives, or manuscripts or because they have an interest in supporting whatever is Dartmouth's top priority."

Sheff said Major Gifts draws names from a list "created through the development office's general knowledge of the alumni body."

"You need two or three significant gifts supported by a few smaller gifts," he said.

If fundraising is unsuccessful, the Trustees have the option of tapping the endowment, as they did to finance the $23 million Psychology building scheduled to be built starting next spring.

But DeWitt said the Trustees have only had to use the endowment only once in the past 12 years.

While the fundraising is going on, Facilities Planning and the future users of the building collaborate to develop what DeWitt called "a kind of recipe or list of needs" to be given to the architects.

College Architect George Hathorn said two groups are responsible for narrowing the selection of architects.

"One is the members of the Design Review Committee. It is eight or nine people from around campus who have some expertise in evaluatingarchitecture," he said.

The othergroup "consists of the end users of the proposed building."

DeWitt said the process usually takes six to eight weeks.

Members of the building committee start with a pool of about 25 architects and narrow the field before requesting submissions.

The Design Review Committee and future users then reduce the list to about six firms, who send representatives to Dartmouth to make presentations.

The committee then makes recommendations to the College Provost and College President. The President and Provost have ultimate authority in choosing the architect, Hathorn said.

Once the College has received site-plan approval from the Hanover Planning Board, contractors bid on the project.

Typically construction is completed in 14 months to two years, DeWitt said.