This post was updated Sept. 22 at 2:20 p.m.

A UC Board of Regents committee voted unanimously Wednesday to recommend allocating an additional $2 million to replace an outdated UCLA emergency power system. 

The project, first approved in 2020, will upgrade the emergency power system for the Center for Health Sciences and its adjacent buildings to ensure that research, clinical activities and safety remain protected in case of a power outage. The Regents discussed the funding at the September Regents meeting, which is taking place Tuesday and Wednesday at UC San Francisco. 

The project was initially expected to be finished in August 2022. 

The Financial and Capital Strategies Committee brought total funding for the project to $41,795,000 with the additional $2 million allocation, $7 million of which the state will pay. The committee voted to recommend the increase of the budget from its original $23,395,000, including the $7 million from the state.

The remaining 83.3% of the money will be funded through external financing.

The ballooning budget – which was also increased in November 2022 – has been attributed to rebidding delays and higher-than-expected building costs, according to the Regents meeting’s agenda item. Over a million dollars of the budget will have been spent on campus administration – which includes project management, contract administration and inspection, according to the agenda item – by the time the project is complete. 

The Center for Health Sciences houses the Fielding School of Public Health, the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and the David Geffen School of Medicine. The project is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act – which requires public developments to minimize environmental harms – because it relates to an existing building.

“UCLA required a replacement of its emergency generator plant, preferring to use diesel engine generators in the lower levels of the building’s parking structure,” said P2S – a consulting engineering company who worked on the project – in a report on its website.

The budget increase comes as the University faces increasing financial strain due to federal government funding cuts amounting to over half a billion dollars and state budgetary concerns. While the state legislature rejected cuts to the UC’s funding for the 2025-2026 fiscal year in June, $130 million in funding to the University was deferred to the 2026-2027 fiscal year. 

[Related: Gov. Gavin Newsom, California State Legislature reach final state budget agreement]

The regents also discussed an ongoing pattern of lower-than-anticipated state financial support and “external funding litigation” during separate sessions Wednesday.

Over the summer, the Trump administration suspended $584 million of research grants to UCLA. Since then, UCLA has implemented initiatives to centralize services including IT, and universities across the UC have laid off workers. 

“The University of California the world has come to know is now at risk,” UC President Milliken said in Wednesday morning remarks to the board. “In fact, it (the federal funding cut) casts a dark shadow over our entire future, calling into question the viability of our institutions and threatening the future of our state and our nation.”

Several UCLA projects, including ones using external contractors to modernize the campus information technology system and replace equipment at the university’s Cogeneration Plant – which provides electricity, steam and water for the campus – have recently come in behind schedule and over budget. The Cogeneration Plant required a $20.5 million budget increase in November.

[Related: UC Regents approve new spending plans, review financial performance]

A UCLA spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the California Construction Cost Index has risen by 55% since 2020.

“Construction costs have risen substantially in California over the last five years due to inflationary pressure on building materials, labor, and equipment costs, and now tariffs,” the spokesperson said.

The project is expected to be completed this month, according to the funding increase’s agenda item.

The committee voted to approve the increase without discussing it, something the committee’s chair, Michael Cohen, said they did so they could instead focus on the system’s upcoming annual budget.

“We can spend the bulk of our time discussing the preliminary look at the upcoming budget,” he said.