ASSESSMENT OF GABALDON BUILDING STARTED TODAY

With the information that funds for the rehabilitation of the Gabaldon building at Manuel Lugod ES is available, the Physical Facilities Coordinator of Gingoog City Division, together with DepED Engineer Sandy Simo went to Manuel Lugod ES to have a personal look at the condition of the building.

The floor in one of the seven classrooms was opened up, enough for the engineer to go down. Engr. Simo studied the structure below and saw some floor joist that needs replacement. The floor itself needs many replacements, owing to the age of the building, which was supposedly built in 1932.

Engineer Simo started making exploratory drawings/sketches to have a clear guide for estimating repair works. The building has seven rooms, four at the corners and three in the middle. Architect Patawaran explained that before, the four corner rooms served as classrooms while the three middle classrooms have movable partitions that served as session hall for functions like meetings, school convocations and even barangay assemblies.

Scaling the walls to see the condition of the roof area proved challenging.Engineer Simo used a short ladder just to reach the capiz window frame. Soon enough he was able to peep into the ceiling joists and was able to see that it is atill in good condition except for the valley gutter area which have some rotten portion especially at the tip outside.

Going to the back area, the engineer crawled down to see the condition of the floor joists and the concrete support. I also crawled down and saw the condition of the floor joists. Some really need replacement. The question is the availability of excellent quality lumber considering that most of the products now are taken from trees less than fifty years old.

We went back to the office to finalize some drawings and some estimates. Hopefully we will be able to finish the estimates so we can post the invitation to bid at the PhilGEPS.