Tata Hall Construction Pushes Ahead of Schedule

Construction on Tata Hall, a facility that will be devoted to the Harvard Business School’s mid-career Executive Education program, is ahead of schedule, according Andrew F. O’Brien, chief of operations at the Business School.

O’Brien, who is overseeing the project, cited the “unseasonably mild winter” as one of the causes of the quicker than expected progress and said that he anticipates “that work will continue along at a steady pace in the coming months.”

Though construction is ahead of schedule, the expected finish date, Dec. 2013, will remain the same, according to O'Brien.

The building will be seven or eight stories tall with about 150,000 gross square feet. It will house approximately 180 bedrooms in addition to academic and multi-purpose spaces.

According to the Business School’s website, the purpose of Tata Hall will be to “enrich the learning experience of managers and leaders who come to HBS.”

The Business School broke ground on Tata Hall on Dec. 5, 2011 after receiving a $50 million dollar gift from the philanthropic arm of the Indian industrial conglomerate Tata Group. Ratan N. Tata, Tata Group chairman, attended the School of Advanced Management Program, an executive education program, in 1975.

At the ground-breaking ceremony for the project, Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria said that “Tata Hall marks the shift to a new global century of business, and is a special marker as we look forward to a renewed, more interconnected world.”

The project is one of several of Harvard’s developments in Allston. But many of Harvard’s other plans have not progressed as smoothly as the construction of Tata Hall. In Dec. 2009, the University indefinitely halted construction on the $1 billion Allston Science Complex, due to financial constraints. The University resumed planning for development in Allston in 2011.

In addition to the construction of Tata Hall, the Business School has also torn down the wall that previously stood along East Drive in order to make the northeast section of its campus, where Tata Hall is located, more accessible, according to Zeenat Potia, the Business School’s associate director of communications.

—Staff writer Mercer R. Cook can be reached at mcook@college.harvard.edu.