Institut Teknologi Bandung

The visit began with remarks and an explanation of the rehabilitation process of the PAU ITB building. As explained by the Strategic Infrastructure Director of Ditjen Cipta Karya, Essy Asiah, in addition to the PAU building, the rehabilitation process also included other buildings around the Tunnel ITB and Sunken Court ITB (which contains secretariat rooms for student organizations) area. The rehabilitation process of the Tunnel and Sunken Court ITB area has reached 100% while the rehabilitation process of the PAU building has reached 71.59%.

"PAU ITB is our planned agenda, it is true that there is a special request for this building because of its old age. The rehabilitation process was started in 2021 and inshallah will be finished on 10 December 2022," she said.

PAU ITB building is one of the centers for research building in ITB that supported the Three Obligations of Higher Education (Tridarma Perguruan Tinggi). The PAU building rehabilitation process, said by the Directorate of Strategic Infrastructure, is to repair the education and research facilities in ITB.

The PAU building is an eight stories building that has an area of 1476,435 square meters, which is located on the Ganesha Street ITB Campus area, Bandung. Essy continued, other than rehabilitating the PAU building, his party also rehabilitate the Sunken Court ITB which is an open place for students' extracurricular activities. In this location, there are 20 student organizations.

The Sunken Court ITB rehabilitation was to revitalize students' activity facilities, including student organization rooms and supporting facilities. The basic existing area of this building is 3933,7 square meters.

Meanwhile, the Tunnel ITB Rehabilitation was carried out along the underground tunnel that connects the ITB campus with Saraga and Sabuga. The basic existing area of this structure is 803,18 square meters. "In addition to that, in the Tunnel project, we also rehabilitate some of the rooms or buildings facilities in Saraga in order to ensure the functionality of every room," she said.

The DPR RI Fifth Commission Team Leader, Ir. H. Anang Susanto, M.Si., said, this specific official visit was done in order to carry out some of the functions of the representatives, especially those related to the budgeting and oversight functions. "In this specific official visit, the DPR RI Fifth Commission wanted to directly inspect the rehabilitation process of the PAU building in ITB and to compose an inventory of possible obstacles in its implementation," he said.

He said, the rehabilitation of the PAU building, which is one of the centers for research, was meant to improve the comfortability of research and innovation activities. "All of us believe that decent and comfortable educational facilities can be the driving force in creating high-quality higher education."

He hopes that the PAU building rehabilitation can be finished on time, that is on December 2022. The DPR RI Fifth Commission also hopes, with this new PAU building, ITB can create advancements in research and innovations that can be beneficial for both science and communities. "We are aware that educated human resources are the main key in advancing this nation in the future."

The ITB Vice Rector for Finance, Planning, and Development, Ir. Muhamad Abduh, M.T., Ph.D., said, the PAU building was built in 1980. At that time, Indonesia was building a lot of new centers of research in universities, one of those was in ITB. This building serves as a gathering place for researchers from various universities to use sophisticated equipment.

"In the future, this building will also function as the gathering place of centers for research in ITB. We have 34 centers of research with four clusters related to energy, health, food, regionalism, and electronic," he said. Muhamad Abdu also added this place will also function as a sharing resource for other universities, to facilitate them with our equipment when they want to conduct research.

"This will be an important part of ITB development masterplan which was included in the five-year strategic plan, where ITB wanted to strengthen its centers for research. We also want to collaborate with the others. We are also currently developing a Science Techno Park (STP)," concluded Ir. M. Abduh.

Translator: Favian Aldilla R (Civil Engineering, 2019)