Government

The Federal Bureau of Investigation broke ground in June of 2021 on the 250,000-sf Innovation Center in Huntsville, Ala. Located on the 243-acre Redstone Arsenal campus, the three-story facility will provide secure, sophisticated environments for data analytics, agent training, and the detection and mitigation of cyber threats. The technology-rich structure will offer collaborative workspaces, formal and informal auditoria, huddle spaces, a virtual reality classroom, and a kinetic cyber range.

The Bolivian National Service of Agricultural Health and Food Safety is planning to build a 201,076-sf research campus in Santa Cruz. Strengthening the country’s research and diagnosis capacity for veterinary, phytosanitary, and food safety challenges, the state-of-the-art complex will provide four laboratory buildings for animal health, plant health, food safety, and fruit fly research, as well as an administrative center.

The new Fourth and Montgomery building, scheduled to open in January 2021 in downtown Portland, Oregon, is a remarkable example of how pooling financial, intellectual, and physical resources can allow public institutions to accomplish much more by working together than would be possible if attempted separately. The seven-story, $111 million building will be owned and occupied by The City of Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, Portland Community College’s Dental Sciences Programs, and Portland State University’s (PSU) College of Education and the PSU | Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) PSU School of Public Health. To simplify the process of working with multiple stakeholders, the project team used an integrated project delivery planning tool called “Choosing by Advantages” (CBA) that helped them manage complex decisions and keep the project on schedule and within budget.

The National Air and Space Intelligence Center awarded Messer Construction a $126.3 million contract in August of 2020 to build the final phase of the Intelligence Production Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. Offering collaboration spaces and workstations for 980 analysts, the five-story complex will provide an additional 255,000 sf of Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) space.

The Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult is planning to create the Manufacturing Innovation Centre in Braintree in the United Kingdom. Supported by £100 million in government funding, the project will enable mass production of a COVID-19 vaccine. An existing pharmaceutical plant has been purchased from Benchmark Holdings at a cost of £16 million. The structure's GMP infrastructure for antigen production, formulation, process development, and scale manufacturing will be repurposed and enhanced. Completion is expected in December of 2021.

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is planning to construct the $86 million Integrated Engineering Research Center in Batavia, Ill. Designed by Perkins+Will with Arup as consulting engineer, the collaborative 80,000-sf structure will collocate engineers, technicians, and scientists at the core of Fermi's campus. Supporting advanced programs in particle physics, the flexible facility will provide reconfigurable labs, offices, design studios, and testing suites.

The Aerospace Corporation will break ground in fall of 2020 on a $100 million research and development center in Colorado. Located adjacent to the company's existing campus in Colorado Springs, the three-story, 90,000-sf structure will provide classified facilities for the design and deployment of resilient space architecture. Featuring a multipurpose technology center, the project will support acquisition, testing, and evaluation activities, as well as the development of tactics, techniques, and procedures.

The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) approved a healthy buildings resolution in June of 2020. "Advancing Healthy Buildings in the Fight Against COVID-19" will support the implementation of integrated solutions for the design and operation of public facilities.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will begin construction in early 2021 on the 160,000-sf High Containment Continuity Laboratory in Atlanta. Designed by a joint venture of Flad Architects and Page, the BSL-4 facility will support the CDC's mission to rapidly detect and mitigate public health hazards. Accommodating approximately 80 investigators, the state-of-the-art laboratory will be one of three centers in the world designed and certified to facilitate diagnostic research on specific, select viruses.

The International WELL Building Institute launched the WELL Health-Safety Rating for all building and facility types in June of 2020. The evidence-based, third-party-verified rating system focuses on operational policies, maintenance protocols, and design strategies for the post-COVID-19 environment.

Access to quick, reliable, and repeated testing has been one of the greatest challenges for businesses, institutions, and individuals during the SARS-CoV-2 crisis. HOK has partnered with Germfree Laboratories to design a mobile testing lab that will help large organizations to meet this urgent need. These self-contained biocontainment facilities can provide advanced, onsite capabilities for any setting.

The U.S. Department of Energy is planning to begin construction in 2021 on the $75 million Grid Storage Launchpad at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. Designed as a resource hub for the development of next-generation grid energy storage technologies, the R&D facility will provide labs for basic materials synthesis and processing, in-operando characterization, small-scale cell fabrication, kilowatt-scale testing and validation, advanced prototyping, visualization, and analysis.

New guidance has been released by the U.S. Department of the Treasury which makes Paycheck Protection Program loans available to companies with 500 or fewer employees, as well as to firms that fall below the size standards set by the Small Business Administration. Construction companies, whose status is generally determined by average annual income threshold and not by number of employees, will benefit from this amendment to the previous announcement, which required a business to meet both criteria to be eligible.

The International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) has assembled a task force to address the role of the built environment in reducing the impact of SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory infections. Aiming to define the critical role that buildings, organizations, and communities play in infectious disease management, the work will take a broad approach in considering both new and recurring agents that can affect large populations.

Federal financial measures have been approved in the past few weeks to shore up the economy during the COVID-19 pandemic, with direct monetary assistance and business loans totaling $5.5 trillion, and more support and flexibility for research universities and government contractors. The federal stimulus package—the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act—is intended to pump $2.2 trillion dollars into the economy, primarily in the healthcare and research sectors, and to provide emergency relief to institutions, businesses, and workers whose livelihoods have been impacted by the pandemic. The specifics of how it will be implemented are still evolving, and it is likely that additional stimulus bills will be considered in the coming months, including investments in infrastructure for the nation’s research enterprise.