3 February 2001
Now we're cooking: the upright and floor-former RSJs go in sharpish, and the building-shaped swimming pool is replaced tout de suite by building-shaped 3D Meccano. You can make out my office, the Wintergarden, and the Maxwellian-view lab, with a bit of imagination. Seems OK sizewise, from what you can see, but missing bolts in the framework are reported in the region of my office, and a security scare concerns the Dean or rival heads of department getting in at night.

3 March 2001
They've now poured the floors, and various ducts and other alimentary systems are going in. It's going up fast. The building work seems a bit too easy, though, a bit too routine. We somehow expected our very special building to require armies of the loincloth-attired, straining every sinew to haul megaliths to the top of our ziggurat. Instead, various cranes and efficient and professional-looking engineers seem to take it all in their stride – except when we take too obvious an interest from beyond the perimeter. You can see them thinking 'What's it to you?', and being puzzled that they can see us thinking it right back.

31 March 2001
RAE census day, when staff are entered for the forthcoming Research Assessment Exercise. Tonight I will sleep the sleep of the grateful and the saved, since as of today I've managed to keep it together through the fateful day, without suffering any stellar migration. Would have been good to get a couple of the other people who are coming in under the wire, but you can’t win them all. Now only need to strike that fine balance between hyperbolic assertion of prowess, and hypertensive irritation in the Panel's readers. I resolve to include only facts, with perhaps a barely detectable emphasis on encouraging ones.

19 April 2001
The JIF project manager rings me with an invitation to a photo opportunity with our new VC. Apparently, it’s traditional to have a ceremony for 'topping off'. I think that’s what he said. I am to become be-suited to convey appropriate gravitas and thus not show up the other participant, and to present myself at lunchtime on the 3rd.

3 May 2001
The photo opportunity party turns out to be rather more numerous than I could have expected. Some I have met, I think. We make our orderly way up ladders to the roof for topping out. They let me hold the wheelbarrow, and so I get to be in the picture, at the back behind those more directly involved. But, after the photographs, the rest depart and I'm left, for the very first time, to have a look round inside the building. I have a momentary urge to flit, like the Housemaster’s wife in 'If', among the rooms and corridors, but instead check out all the labs and the gossip space. There's been a bit of stealth redesign – the best sort as you don't see it until it's too late to worry about – but it's plainly going to be knockout, reminiscent of Ernst Stavro Blofeld's various headquarters. I can see potential for a piranha pond. The magnet is going to fill a space 25ft tall: Big Science! On the way back, I’m hoping the uncommon sight of the suit will cut some ice back in the office – 'Every girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man', as ZZ Top have said – but they seem less crazy when you’re covered in cement dust.

Professor Malcolm Young is in the Department of Psychology, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

See also

• Young, gifted and very, very well equipped: Article from the diary of JIF awardee, Malcolm Young, Part 1
• The space age: Article from the diary of JIF awardee, Malcolm Young, Part 2
• Progress…of a kind: Article from the diary of JIF awardee, Malcolm Young, Part 3

External links

• University of Newcastle: Research interests of the Department of Psychology