Fort Lewis is in the midst of a $2.8 billion burst of construction, mostly focusing on barracks renewal. If approved by Congress, another $1.8 billion is scheduled to be spent over the next five years, on projects other than barracks renewal. For fiscal year 2009, which began in October 2009, $477 million is slated for military projects across the state.

It’s mixed news for local contractors, eager to secure any available work. “We’re moving from bidding projects locally to bidding similar projects from central locations to help streamline the process,” says Victor Ramos from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Seattle District. “We expect more national companies from out of the area to bid on the contracts, but they will probably be using local subcontractors.”

Even without having to contend with an active construction market, the Corps had been having a hard time attracting bidders. “We would get two or three bidders on these projects,” says Ramos. “People would say they didn’t like bidding on government work.” Says Ramos. “We went out to industry and asked them how to improve our projects and bidding process so that more contractors would respond.”

One recent barracks renewal project was FY06 41st Division Drive, completed under a design-build contract by Absher Construction, Puyallup. “We are starting to go to design build, especially in cases like this where we needed the housing quickly. A project that would take a year to design and a year to build can be designed and built fast track in half the time,” says Ramos.

Gone are the barracks that had been in use since before WWII. “We are starting to build barracks combined with headquarters so offices were close to where people live,” says Dick Devlin, public information officer with the Corps of Engineers.

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Now soldiers have their own rooms and share a bathroom with one other person. Laundry facilities can be shared or included in single rooms. Soldiers still eat in common dining facility. Absher held the main contract and with WJA Design and three design build contractors Ault Electric, Pease and Sons for mechanical services and Cosco Fire Protection for fire protection services on the project.

Absher used Prolog a web-based project management system. It provided real time information that was the backbone of the project management system. The USACE’s quality control system was used for communication with the government as required by the RFP. Prolog allowed project communications, design document management requests for information submittals, schedule and change orders to be turned around in minutes.

Force protection, was one of the difficulties of the project. The building required progressive collapse design for the three story barracks and blast-window anchorage for all the buildings. Extensive communication between the framing experts at Absher and the structural engineers at WJA resulted in a strong building system.

The team used an accelerated schedule to move up the final design of the building foundations and site months in advance of the final submittal. The other advantage of the accelerated schedule included identifying long lead items early in the project. The team also used modular construction techniques to assemble significant areas of room on the ground before erection onto the buildings.

In addition to the normal safety challenges the team worked next to a WWII target practice field with over 50 unexploded ordinance uncovered on previous projects. Ultimately only two were found on the site. “We set up a special contract to help deal with unexploded ordinance,” says Ramos. Once suspicious material is found, an ordinance expert is dispatched to the site to identify and safely destroy the material. Other significant projects planned for the Northwest in fiscal year 2009 include

• $8.6 million for Washington State Air National Guard’s 262nd Information Warfare Aggressor Squadron to build a new cyber-warfare facility for use by the (IWAS) at McChord Air Force Base.

• $56 million for the Readiness and Environment Protection Initiative (REPI) to be used to acquire land and development rights in the buffer zone North of McChord Air Force Base’s runway. This program helps public and private entities establish protective buffer zones around military installations.

• Mortenson Co. received a $72.1 million firm-fixed price contract for a design/build project at Fort Lewis, including 2 Special Operations Forces complexes. Work is expected to be complete by May 2010.