At one level it makes a kind of sense - they were scattered all over campus in a variety of buildings at variable states of ramshackleness but even though the new building is HUGE it must have been obvious pretty early one that it wasn't HUGE enough and corralling all your (hopefully world-beating engineers) into labs which are too small doesn't seem like a great strategy.

To add insult to injury it's now been renamed from the "Engineering Building" to the "Nancy Rothwell Building" after our departing VC. At some level, of course, it was all her doing but I'm not sure that really helps.