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Home » News » 2025 » August

News Brief

Aug. 7, 2025 |  By: Gavin McGough

Maintenance at Northwest on three-part infrastructure project

The maintenance team at Northwest has been busy this summer as it tackles the second phase of a major, three-part infrastructure project. With a total budget of over $100 million dollars, it is the biggest capital project in university history.

As summer winds down, Assistant Vice President of Facilities Dan Haslag sat down with KXCV's Gavin McGough to talk about the work. Here's their conversation:

 It's been a busy summer for maintenance crews at Northwest Missouri State University. Construction is tackling the second phase of a major campus infrastructure project.

As summer wraps up and construction races to finish, Assistant Vice President of Facilities, Dan Haslag joined us in the KXCV studio to talk about the work. He begins with an overview of the project and its background. 

Haslag says, " Really what brought this all to start is that we knew we had a fair amount of deferred maintenance on campus. We had systems that were at or beyond life expectancy in our central heating plant, for instance. We had boilers that were installed in the early sixties.  So like anything, it's got a certain lifespan. And since that central heating plant provides heat to about 70% of campus, if we had some catastrophic event with those old antiquated boilers, that would be significant mission disruption for the institution. So what we're doing is decentralizing that by putting very high efficiency boilers in several buildings on campus that feed clusters of buildings instead of one central plant that provides heating to the majority of them.  I think, you know, from a kind of a sustainability standpoint as well, one of the things we need to do is really be able to manage energy usage. That's one of the things that's going to really be an outcome of this is very efficient heating and cooling throughout campus."

 Best case scenario, what can folks expect to kind of come move in?

 Haslag responds, "Well, we're shooting to have the majority of the outside work, the trenches, all of that sort of patched up and filled back in. Of course we're not gonna have a lush lawn on those locations, but, we're hoping to have a lot of the fencing down. Getting back to some sort of sense of normalcy. We are gonna be working behind the scenes this fall while the students are here and we're back in session. So there's a lot of work going on in mechanical rooms behind the scenes to get ready for a number of HVAC replacements and upgrades. We're looking to take on a massive HVAC project in the administrative building. But otherwise, our plans are not to really disrupt the mission of the institution while we're working on these infrastructure phases."

 The boiler facility was named for John Redden, who was a long time facilities worker here at the college. Is that correct?

 Haslag says, "That is correct. You know, he led the facilities team for a number of years, very innovative and I think in my first week starting here, I started hearing stories about John Redden. So he's really in the maintenance world, a legend around here."

 And the region, some have put his name on the maintenance building, as the power plant is scheduled to be demolished. Have there been any discussions of future uses for that? 

Haslag says, "There hasn't been yet. Right now we're gonna turn it into a green space. There's really no plans per our master plan, it doesn't show any facilities there. So right now is, we're intending just to kind of beautify this space. I think it's gonna be at least an opportunity from a aesthetic sightline point of view."

 That was assistant Vice President of Facilities at Northwest, Dan Haslag, discussing campus construction activities from the summer. Our conversation was edited for length and clarity with KXCV, I'm Gavin McGough.