Long before the project team building the U.S. Military Academy’s Cyber & Engineering Academic Center at West Point, N.Y., could begin work on the highly technical granite veneer facade this summer, it happened almost a year digging 350,000 cubic meters of granite gneiss. “There was a significant amount of rock blasting, and then we had to ship it all out in about 38,000 trucks,” says Gary Snee, project executive for Dobco Inc., Wayne, N.J., the general contractor for the project designed to prepare the US military. cadets for the battlefields of the future.
The 146,000-square-meter Cyber and Engineering Academic Center will include engineering labs for the civil and mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science and systems engineering departments, all under one roof.
Representation courtesy of Jacobs-EwingCole JV
The $200 million project involves joining together granite veneer, natural limestone veneer, precast structural arches clad in natural limestone and aluminum curtain wall “to create a Gothic-style facade with multiple buttresses and Tudor arches,” says Snee. “This complex sheet is built on a structural steel frame with concrete masonry unit safety walls and an air/vapor barrier.”
His company is collaborating with the US Army Corps of Engineers, New York District, on the four-story, 146,000-square-foot engineering laboratory and learning complex. Beyond rock blasting and sheet metal work, the scope of the project includes new research space for the academy’s civil, mechanical, electrical, and systems engineering programs, as well as computer science, along with two levels of underground parking.
Before the rock blast, the team placed vibration monitors set at low limits on homes and other nearby structures to keep peak particle velocities and vibrations within safe limits.
Photo courtesy of Dobco
Leslie Klosky, West Point professor of civil engineering and executive project officer for design and construction, says it’s a “centerpiece” of a much larger academic building improvement program at the 222-year-old institution of antiquity which includes a renovation of the engineering training facilities. until the middle of the 20th century. The upgrades, to “exceed $1 billion” in investment, “will enable the academy to achieve a modern, adaptable and inspiring level of engineering education that simply cannot be achieved in the current academic buildings and classroom spaces of 60s style,” says Klosky.
“It managed to maintain consistency with traditional, regimented historic architecture while integrating a forward-looking environment through early stakeholder engagement.”
—Gary Calligaro, Project Manager, Jacobs
For facade arches, several types of engineered sheet metal connections are required, adding complexity, Snee says. Installation of the facade, which will take eight months, includes about 56,000 square feet of granite veneer with an additional 30,000 square feet of limestone and precast concrete.
The facility was designed by a joint venture of Jacobs as exterior designer and EwingCole as designer of record for architecture and engineering and interior designer to support multidisciplinary project-based engineering education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The facility will also provide cadets with mission-ready training in digital domains that can support their efforts on physical battlefields.
“Maintaining consistency with traditional, regimented historic architecture while integrating a forward-thinking environment was accomplished through early stakeholder engagement,” says Jacobs Project Manager Gary Calligaro.
Exploration of various options for the parking structure resulted in an underground facility that “significantly reduced environmental impacts, reduced construction costs and improved the ability to maintain the high level of ‘aesthetics, efficiency and functionality at West Point,’ he says. The designers created a space to prepare cadets for the anticipated Fourth Industrial Revolution: a “fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres,” says the World Economic Forum.
The team excavated 350,000 cubic meters of rock to make way for the parking lot.
Photo courtesy of Dobco
Each of the building’s 59 laboratories is designed to be flexible and adaptable to accommodate programs that evolve with rapid technological change, including those in structural engineering, thermodynamics, biomechanics, photonics, telecommunications, sensors, artificial intelligence , high-tech robotics and even environmental and environmental. energy sustainability. A high bay robotics lab will allow for indoor drone flight and robotics use. For the aeronautical and thermodynamics lab, builders will use an isolated room-within-a-room construction technique to limit sounds and vibrations from louder research spaces that often use heavier equipment that could disturb surrounding classrooms.
These spaces will include independent double-glazed front systems with laminated and insulating glass. For greater soundproofing and to reduce echoes, there will be partitions and building doors for acoustic separation, as well as sound-absorbing finishes in the classrooms, audiovisual spaces and the atrium. Interiors with elevated access floors allow for future rewiring and restructuring.
The building progresses upwards from the resistant “dirty” spaces on the first level to the clean spaces on the third. Partition systems are designed with concrete masonry walls from the slab to the first floor and then to plasterboard on the second and third. “Our goal for the design is to create transparency across disciplines, encourage open communication and collaboration, and provide a state-of-the-art facility,” says John Capelli, EwingCole Principal and Director of Government Practice.
A crew prepares to place the concrete for the base of the parking lot.
Photo courtesy of Dobco
To meet LEED Silver certification, the facility design also includes energy-efficient features such as high-volume, low-speed fans in the high-bay robotics lab and solar panels on the roof. During 11 months of rock blasting before construction began, the team had to attach vibration monitors to all structures near the blasted construction site.
“We were required to monitor several residential and academic buildings during the explosion, as well as the water tower, the dam, the existing barracks and the historic chapel at West Point,” says Snee. “All structures had vibration monitors [set] in very low limits”. That stage of work required “a lot of planning,” with residences located 50 feet to 100 feet from where the explosions were occurring and 15 feet from the road, he adds.
“Excavation of hard rock by blasting near historically important structures was very difficult.”
— Ledlie Klosky, Professor of Civil Engineering, US Military Academy
“Excavating hard rock by blasting near historically important structures was very difficult,” says Klosky. A strong partnership “among all stakeholders was necessary to get the job done in an efficient, safe and timely manner.”
Crews began nearly 10 months of work on the underground garage’s foundation in June 2022, with two more months needed to complete the structure. These works included the installation of a steel structure to support the upper building. The cast-in-place parking structure was built with 18,000 cubic yards of concrete, Snee says.
The 450 underground parking spaces solve “long-standing access issues,” says Silas Bowman, the Corps’ project manager. The parking structure, also designed with progressive collapse beams cast in place with post-tensioning cables, “adds a bit of rebar. [for] the strength needed to meet these standards, which was difficult but not impossible for ironworkers to build,” says Snee. “The back tension cables are designed to be placed around this rebar armor specifically with little or no margin for error.”
In addition to facade, mechanical and duct work, construction on the interior of the new building is also well advanced in construction, according to Snee. Concrete masonry unit walls have been completed for interior partitions, with interior and exterior cold-formed metal framing and interior metal installation also nearing completion.
After the June 2022 rock blast, crews began nearly 10 months of work on the underground garage’s foundation.
Photo courtesy of Dobco
Addressing these challenges required a high level of quality control and quality assurance process, including inspections by prime contractors, subcontractors, the Corps, and third parties, as well as reviews by designers of record.
Despite some pandemic issues and financial repercussions for contractors after the contract is awarded in 2020, the project is on track to finish on budget and on schedule in July 2025, according to Corps Project Manager Bowman .
“Due to the length of the project, the contractor has been able to procure materials far enough in advance to reduce any real impact on schedule,” he says. Adds Snee: “We’re making pretty good progress.”
