The construction of the new diesel building at the Livingston TCAT campus on pace to be completed this fall.
TCAT Upper Cumberland President Cliff Wightman said the project is in its final stages. The contractor is completing the interior while also paving the outside portion of the building.
“We’re looking for an open date of around the end of August,” Wightman said. “You know, there’s still some paving things going on, but you know, worst case scenario will be you know, first of September, and have everything in the buildings and everything moved over to it, so we are in good shape.”
Wightman said the project did have soil issues, but those issues were quickly resolved. Wightman said he is looking forward to moving into the new building.
“This new building allows space for you know, tractors, or you know, logging equipment, anything that you can possibly think of that is diesel powered,” Wightman said. “Now, we are gonna have the space to be able to pull those types of vehicles in there to work on and train as well. So it’s gonna be a much more fluid program with a lot more job opportunities for students.”
Wightman said the campus has been able to maneuver around the construction.
“We had opened the auto collision program back up, which the diesel program was in, so we had to kind of relocate the diesel to another spot on the campus in preparation for moving into our new building,” Wightman said. “But you know, hey, we are TCATs and we just roll with the flow and it hasn’t disrupted any of the instruction at all.”
Wightman said once the diesel program is moved into the new building, TCAT will be looking to add a program to fill in the space at the old building.
Construction began last fall.
