DOE taps contractor and designer for new NREL facility in Colorado
The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has tapped its partners to design and build a new research facility at its South Table Mountain Campus in Golden, Colo.
The 127,000-square-foot Energy Materials and Processing at Scale (EMAPS) laboratory will be used to accelerate laboratory-scale innovations in energy materials to market-ready products and processes.
The DOE selected JE Dunn Construction and its design partner SmithGroup to design and build the new research facility. The total budget for the project is $224 million.
“We’re excited for another successful partnership with JE Dunn and SmithGroup to design and construct NREL’s next big laboratory,” NREL Director Martin Keller said. “The research that will happen in EMAPS will fill a huge gap in today’s industry of scale-up and adoption of the materials crucial for a clean energy economy.”
Ten years ago, JE Dunn and SmithGroup partnered with NREL to build the Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF), a 180,000-square-foot research building also on NREL’s South Table Mountain Campus. The future site of EMAPS will be directly adjacent to it.
“Returning to the NREL campus is more than just securing another project; it marks the continuation of a valuable partnership,” JE Dunn Project Director Charlie Slattery said. “JE Dunn’s previous work with NREL and SmithGroup on the NREL ESIF project laid the foundation for innovation, and we are eager to embark on this new journey to deliver another transformative facility.”
JE Dunn was also selected for a new contracting agreement known as the Cooperative Construction Contracting Approach (CCCA). The CCCA is an overarching contract vehicle that will allow NREL to expedite future construction contracting processes in the coming years on large construction projects. EMAPS will be the first building to be designed and constructed under the CCCA agreement.
“The EMAPS facility will create a dramatic new gateway to the iconic and picturesque NREL campus,” SmithGroup Design Director Mark Kranz said. “Designed to integrate elegantly into the architectural brand of the campus, and strategically located adjacent to both the Research Support Facility and the Energy Systems Integration Facility, EMAPS creates new physical and functional connections that will advance NREL’s research capabilities.”
EMAPS is intended to achieve a minimum of LEED Gold certification with a sustainable, high-performance design. It will be designed to have modern, open, and flexible spaces that accommodate rapid experiment configuration and collaboration between researchers. The space will be designed with concepts that facilitate reconfigurability and flexibility in research directions as new insights and needs arise.
Construction is anticipated to start in late 2024.
