DPR Team Awarded NSA Utah Contract

A  joint venture team led by DPR Construction has been selected to build the $1 billion new data center for the National Security Agency at Camp Williams in Utah. DPR's partners in the bid were Balfour Beatty US of Dallas and Big D Construction of Salt Lake City. The award was announced Friday by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

Utah economic development officials have estimated that the 1 million square foot project could involve 7,000 workers or more during the peak of construction.

DPR has extensive experience in the data center field. The company is currently working on the new Facebook data center in Oregon, and has worked on multiple data centers for Digital Realty Trust. Other DPR clients include Equinix, 365 Main, Fortune Data Centers, Charles Schwab and E*Trade.

The Army Corps of Engineers has outlined the rough parameters of the project, including a 30-megawatt first phase featuring 100,000 square feet of data center space and 900,00 square feet for technical support and administrative space.

The estimated costs for this 1 million square foot facility range from $1 billion to $1.9 billion. Construction has been broken into three phases, with the first phase resulting in a data center with a 30 megawatt technical load, and including modular structural components. The 2010 defense budget describes the project as “required to provide a 30MW technical load data center and infrastructure for 65MW technical load data center capacity.”

Plans call for the facility to target a silver rating under the LEED ( Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program, a voluntary rating system for energy efficient buildings overseen by the US Green Building Council.