Project in the News

National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency: “New NGA St. Louis campus construction continues, on schedule despite COVID-19 pandemic”

JESSICA DAUES, OFFICE OF CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS – June 12, 2020

​Construction on NGA’s new campus in north St. Louis is progressing without significant delays despite the COVID-19 pandemic, said Sue Pollmann, program director for the Next NGA West. The building is slated to be completed in 2023, with IT installation in 2024 and a move-in date of 2025.

Pollmann said circumstances have helped keep facility construction on-track during the pandemic.

“We’re still in design, and the construction work right now is outdoors and not contained inside a building,” Pollmann said. Public health experts have said the threat of virus transmission is reduced outdoors.

Pollmann said both NGA employees and NGA’s partner organizations are taking precautions to avoid transmission of the virus.

Pollmann said that NGA has been maximizing telework opportunities to reduce the number of people working on-site in trailers, giving the people who are there “plenty of room to spread out.”

Col. William Hannan Jr., commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Kansas City District, said that the Corps of Engineers, which is managing the construction of NGA’s new campus on behalf of NGA, and its construction partners are taking “deliberate measures to keep our workforce safe and continue construction to the best of our ability in this environment.”

Jeff Boyer, vice president of operations for McCarthy Building Company, said COVID-19 is “on everyone’s mind.” McCarthy is part of the facility’s design-build team, along with HITT Contracting.

“We’ve had to make some changes on how we’ve worked,” he said. “The focus has been surrounding the safety and health of employees, subcontractors and the community. We’re following CDC and state and local health officials’ guidelines. There is additional sanitizing on-site, and we follow social distancing and use face masks and face covering when social distancing is not achievable.”

Boyer said that with the work being done currently, there is a low density of workers on-site, often using large machinery, and that social-distancing naturally occurs.

Michael Pranger, vice president of operations for Castle Contracting, which is performing the grading and utilities work, said that because the site work provides natural spacing, his team hasn’t seen an impact to their work. “We’re making sure we’re providing people the necessary PPE [personal protective equipment] to feel comfortable doing their job,” he said.

Boyer said work on the site the past few months has been primarily grading and mapping and installation of site utilities, such as water, electrical and sewers. Boyer said the team has moved approximately 850,000 cubic yards of dirt to prepare the site. “That’s enough to fill [St. Louis Cardinals’ baseball] Busch Stadium one and a half times over,” he said.

Boyer said work on the foundation is scheduled to begin in June.

Pollmann said that she’s very excited to be at a stage where progress will be visible.

“We can actually see the earth-moving going on at the site, the access control point is taking shape, soon there will be a formal gate where workers will enter and be screened,” she said. “It’s very exciting after years of defining requirements, contracting work and design, that we’re now at the point where people can literally see things happening.”

COVID-19 also has not delayed the hiring of contractors and subcontractors, said Boyer. He said that McCarthy-HITT is placing “a heavy emphasis on small businesses and minority- and women-owned businesses to help us meet goals for the project.”

The NGA campus’ construction goals are to include 25 percent minority-owned and 5 percent woman-owned businesses for subcontractor participation; and 15 percent minority and greater than 5 percent female for the individual workforce participation.

Hannan said that attracting a qualified workforce for the construction of the facility is imperative for the project. “That’s how they are successful,” he said.

He said the Corps of Engineers and its partners have hosted four construction job fairs in St. Louis to attract some of that workforce, and there will be plans for more. “As you continue to see those fairs, come on out, see what’s available,” he said. “It’s a good opportunity in our region.”

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St. Louis Business Journal: “St. Louis firm lands $500,000 contract for NGA project”

ST. LOUIS – April 20, 2020.

The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a St. Louis company a nearly $500,000 multiyear contract for the new western headquarters of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

Dala Worldwide Services, a minority- and woman-owned small business, was awarded the $491,279.81 contract to provide janitorial services for the on-site office space throughout construction of the Next NGA West. Dala’s services will enable the Corps and NGA to maintain an on-site presence throughout the construction, the Corps said in a release.

The agency’s new $1.7 billion western headquarters in North City is the largest-ever federal investment in St. Louis. The campus will feature a 712,000-square-foot office building, parking garages, a visitor center and more, on 97 acres at Jefferson and Cass avenues. Construction started this spring, and the Corps has said it’s following all COVID-19 safety precautions with construction.

The janitorial services contract was one of six opportunities the Corps identified outside of the $711.7 million design-build contract it awarded to McCarthy HITT, a joint venture of St. Louis-based construction contractor McCarthy Holdings, Virginia-based HITT, Kansas-based Black & Veatch, California-based Gensler and Virginia-based Akima LLC.

The Next NGA West project is a partnership among NGA, the Army Corps of Engineers’ Kansas City district, the Air Force, and McCarthy HITT JV, which is building the project. The Army Corps of Engineers’s Kansas City district is responsible for the design, construction and delivery of the N2W facilities.

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The St. Louis American: “City’s inclusion goals set for NGA”

ST. LOUIS – Dec 19, 2019.

“More than 1,000 workers could be employed daily in 2022 during peak construction of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s new $1.75 billion facility project, which broke ground on November 26.

This is a tremendous opportunity to implement the City of St. Louis’ law for employing local residents, minorities, women and apprentices, according to advocates and union leaders.

The city’s inclusion goals require that a minimum of 25 percent of the contract’s labor hours go to minorities, 7 percent go to women, 23 percent to city residents and 20 percent to apprentices.

In 2016, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) officials, which is overseeing design and construction, told The St. Louis American that the agency can only adopt federal workforce goals of 14.7 percent minority and 6.9 percent women on the N.G.A. project.

However, members of the McCarthy-HITT joint venture team leading the project’s construction said that they have taken it upon themselves to implement the city’s goals.

“We have our contractual goals and our internal goals, but those are just numbers,” Heather Cirre, small business manager for the McCarthy-HITT team. “We are really interested in maximizing the participation of the community around us, based on what the marketplace will support.”

For them, the project is also an opportunity to build a pipeline of apprentices and address the issue of attrition in the trades, Cirre said.”

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