Mission: Upgrade

Current and Planned Projects Will Upgrade Facilities at Tampa’s MacDill Air Force Base

By Debra Wood

More than $800 million in construction projects are under way or about to take place at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.

“We’re focused on improving the installation infrastructure because it’s a top priority,” says Robert Hughes, director of the 6th Civil Engineer Squadron at MacDill. “We want to make sure our personnel have the best facilities available to complete their mission.”

Projects now in the works range from a $10 million security forces facility to a $107 million Joint Intelligence Center for the U.S. Central Command. Some of the work upgrades or replaces aging facilities, and a smaller amount is related to Base Realignment and Closure, with the 927th Air Refueling Wing currently at Selfridge, Mich., moving to MacDill this year.

“There’s a lot of construction for a lot of customers Central Command, Special Operations Command,” says Kevin Powell, area engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Tampa. “The 6th Air Mobility Wing is also based at MacDill and has a pretty good program. MacDill has been the recipient of much attention by the Department of Defense and Congress.”

Joint Intelligence Center

Clark Construction Group of Tampa began work on the four-story, 260,000-sq-ft Joint Intelligence Center project in July 2006. It will serve as an administrative hub for the intelligence community. Features include an auditorium, offices and conference rooms. Burns & McDonnell of Kansas City, Mo., designed the building.

“This is the headquarters where they fight the war from,” says John Omran, executive vice president of Clark. “This is designed (so that) if future needs change, the building will accommodate change.”

advertisement

Congress appropriated incremental funding funding for the project in fiscal years 2006, 2007 and this year.

“Our construction schedule had to meld with congressional funding,” Powell says. “We had some delays that we are currently negotiating and working through because of the interrupted funding stream.”

A certain amount of work was scheduled for each year, but Congress took longer to appropriate the money than expected. The job went into a partial suspension at the end of fiscal year 2007 to avoid running out of money, but it’s now back on track.

The steel-frame building sits on a steel-pipe foundation. The piles range from 35 ft deep to more than 270 ft deep. The first-floor slab is on grade between the columns.

“There was tremendous variation in the pile depth due to the unique subsurface conditions on the Tampa peninsula,” Powell says. “Some went so deep we exceeded the slenderness ratio for the design piles, and we had to upsize from a 9-in. to a 13.5-in. pile. There is no consistency in the subsurface.”

Concrete shear walls in stairwells and elevator cores provide lateral stability for the building.

“We eliminated the normal diagonal members throughout the building that you’d see with structural steel,” Powell says. “It has opened the spans up, and the larger rooms are not broken by diagonal bracing, giving an open feel to the building.”

The structure has raised floors with HVAC and most primary power running below the floor. Telecommunication and lighting are placed in the ceiling.

“That’s done to allow the customer to come in and reconfigure relatively easily,” Powell says. “Also from an operational point of view, if you are talking about a secure facility, you don’t want a lot of workers hauling in ladders, scaffolding and gear.”

Thick precast concrete clads the structure and offers force protection. The building sports a standing-seam metal roof.

The project also includes a two-level parking garage, central utility plant with backup generators and shedder room, and a water storage tank to serve the entire base. Once the new facilities are up, Clark will demolish the existing underground water storage tank and a maintenance building.

Clark’s Omran expects to complete the project later this year or early in 2009.

“For us, it’s a pleasure building this kind of building,” Omran says. “There’s a sense of giving back to the armed forces for everything they do for us.”

The clinic

Caddell Construction of Montgomery, Ala., is building a $73.8 million, 236,000-sq-ft, two-story clinic facility to provide outpatient primary and specialty care for the U.S. Army Medical Command. Construction began in the fall, with completion expected in December 2009. Once the new clinic is open, Caddell will demolish the old one.

The structural-steel building is coming out of the ground. It will sit on a drilled and gravel-filled pile foundation. The 4- to 6-ft shafts reach to depths of about 25 ft.

“The rock and gravel worked well to stabilize the soil, and there will be no settlement in the future,” says Holmes Gray, construction executive with Caddell.

The exterior will be masonry with stucco.

MEDCOM’s 6th Medical Group also plans to rebuild the pharmacy facility. The $7 million job will add 7,297 sq ft to the existing 6,310-sq-ft building. The center is the third busiest pharmacy in the Air Force and handles about 45,000 prescriptions monthly.

The Corps of Engineers expects to award a construction contract for a $118 million, 260,000-sq-ft CENTCOM headquarters building this fiscal year. It will use the same template as the Joint Intelligence Center.

Sauer of Jacksonville received the $26.7 million, design-build contract for the 96,000-sq-ft Special Operations Command’s 501 Delta Building. A concrete-pile foundation will support the concrete-and-steel structure. The ground has been cleared and design is progressing.

SOCOM also plans a 501 Echo Building and a parking garage. The projects will provide permanent facilities and eliminate the need for trailers. Engineer Squadron Director Hughes says the base plans to start those special operations’ projects later this summer.

Walbridge Aldinger of Detroit is building an $11.7 million, 32,000-sq-ft security forces facility for the MacDill Resident Office. Hughes anticipates completion by yearend.

David Boland of Titusville, Fla., is working on a $9.7 million, 31,600-sq-ft, 80-room dormitory. Work began in April 2007 and is tracking toward an on-time finish in September for the three-story, concrete and structural-block building.

Once personnel move into the new CENTCOM and SOCOM facilities and vacate their existing space, Sauer will begin a $14.5 million BRAC project to renovate 48,000 sq ft in two existing buildings and construct a two-story, 33,000-sq-ft structure between them.

Also BRAC-related, the Corps of Engineers has plans for an approximately $7.5 million, two-story, 30,000-sq-ft Air Force Reserve Training facility.

The Headquarters Air Force Services Agency has proposed a $65 million, 450-room visiting quarters/club. It is not yet funded.

The Joint Communication Support Element plans a new $34 million, 64,000-sq-ft facility in fiscal year 2009 that will bring the squadron under one roof.

In addition to projects being built with military construction funding, operations and maintenance projects and environmental cleanup work are funded through Department of Defense operating and maintenance budgets.

In a 50-year public-private partnership to revitalize housing on Air Force bases, developer Clark Realty of Arlington, Va., is building 331 new housing units at MacDill. The initial six-year development budget for MacDill is $180 million for a mix of single-family homes and duplexes. Construction is scheduled to start in the fall.