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BALFOUR BEATTY: NGA EAST CAMPUS PROJECT www.balfourbeatty.com
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A joint venture of Clark Construction Group and Balfour construction of a sprawling, multi-faceted project for the National Agency and is on track to complete it in less than four y
Clark Construction / Balfour Beatty: NGA East Campus Project
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he National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) may be one of the least visible of the agencies that help protect national security, but its mission to “know the earth and show the way� makes it a key partner to other intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense. As it has grown over the years, the NGA took whatever space was available, and when the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) legislation was written in 2005, the agency was the recipient of one of the largest construction projects to create a new, consolidated home for its employees and the technology that supports them.
Clark Construction / Balfour Beatty: NGA East Campus Project
The $1.7 billion, four-year project will create a new 2.1-million-square-foot office tower complex and a 150,000-square-foot data center, along with 1.6 million square feet of surface and garage parking and a 100,000-square-foot central utility plant. Overseeing the massive construction project is a joint venture of Clark Construction Group and Balfour Beatty, which teamed up due to the sheer size and scope of the work, which at its peak is producing some $2 million to $3 million a day of work. The joint venture will self-perform a relatively small percentage of the work, instead relying heavily on subcontractors to perform the bulk of the activity. The new facility is rising on the former Engineer Proving Ground at Fort Belvoir in Springfield, Virginia, where the NGA already had a presence prior to the decision to consolidate. Some of the work has already been turned over to the agency, with a rolling move-in planned leading up to final turnover in the spring of 2011. When completed, the facility will consolidate a number of existing locations in Reston, Westfields and Newington, Virginia, as well as Washington DC; Bethesda, Maryland; and elsewhere on the Fort Belvoir property. According to Keith Couch, senior vice president with Clark Construction, the work began with infrastructure improvements designed to create easier access to the site from nearby highways, and to create parking and staging areas for the many various work components and a 40,000-square-foot temporary office facility to house project management teams. “Getting the infrastructure in place to support a 1,800-person construction operation was one of the early challenges,� Couch says, adding that work required coordination with numerous federal
Clark Construction / Balfour Beatty: NGA East Campus Project
Pierce Associates Pierce Associates has been successfully providing mechanical construction services to the greater metropolitan Washington, DC area since 1961. Unlike most others in the industry, Pierce Associates performs the full range of mechanical construction functions with our own union forces including sheet metal, steam fitting, plumbing, air & water balancing and commissioning for HVAC and plumbing systems. As a result, we offer both owners and general contractors one source for comprehensive performance of mechanical work. Pierce Associates has earned the highest reputation for quality, integrity and reliable performance.
When completed, the project will be seeking a Silver-level certification from the US Green Building Council’s LEED program, with both design and construction elements contributing to the overall sustainability of the project. “That has gone very well,” says Couch. “We’re on track to meet that goal. LEED is getting to be standard practice on our projects, and the entire construction team is well versed in doing our part.” The joint venture was hired while design was still under way and quickly brought in key subcontractors to help bring drawings to completion. “There was a significant pre-construction effort that had those key subs working with the NGA, the Army Corps of Engineers and the design team to help find savings and construction improvements where possible,” notes Couch. Although the construction market in the Washington DC area was still relatively busy
“Everyone got onto the same page early on. We had to get right to work, and I think that helped us focus on the task at hand. It’s been a great team effort from top to bottom” and state agencies, including the US Army Corps of Engineers, the NGA, Fairfax County and the Virginia Department of Transportation. Among other challenges facing the construction team have been the aggressive schedule and the need to perform work in a choreographed sequence, with teams of subcontractors moving among the various parts of the project when needed. “We started prior to the design being complete,” notes Mike Phillips, Couch’s counterpart and senior vice president representing Balfour Beatty. “This has been a fast-tracked job right from the start.” The office tower work in particular lends itself to sequencing of work, with teams of contractors able to follow one another through each of the eight towers making up the central office facility, part of a campus that will include a fitness facility, a credit union and other employee amenities. The NGA has been ranked among the top 50 places—and one of the top five government agencies—at which to work in the Washington DC area by Washingtonian magazine.
when the work began, the project was one of the first BRAC jobs to be approved for completion, helping it get ahead of a large wave of similar work on bases in and around the nation’s capital. “Being a big job, it really lent itself to capturing stronger and larger subs in key areas,” says Phillips. To make the overall project more manageable, it was broken down into components with teams responsible for managing specific aspects of the work. “We tried to break it down so it was more in the range of the size of projects that we would normally encounter,” Couch says. Clark and Balfour Beatty are also working together in a joint venture at the new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda. The two firms are similar in size and culture and were able to quickly work side by side. “Everyone got onto the same page early on,” Couch says. “We had to get right to work, and I think that helped us focus on the task at hand. It’s been a great team effort from top to bottom.” www.clarkconstruction. com, www.balfourbeatty.com
CLARK
CONSTRUCTION
BALFOUR BEATTY: NGA EAST CAMPUS PROJECT www.balfourbeatty.com