Agencies design state-of-the-art building for weather and climate prediction

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is slated to move to a state-of-the-art building in a new Maryland research center in early 2008. The new facility will boast advanced environmental and technological features, designed to enhance employees' productivity and help attract the best and brightest to the agency.

Ground was broken last month for the building at the University of Maryland's M-Square Research and Technology Park in Riverdale Park, Md. The building will house about 750 employees in 270,000 square feet of space, and be home to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction, Satellite and Information Service and Air Resources Laboratory.

The facility also is designed to give shelter to the significant load of computing power required to run sophisticated environmental models and simulations.

Louis Uccellini, director of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, said the centers are currently housed in a Camp Springs, Md., facility that they've occupied for 30 years. That building, designed long before the days of inexpensive, high-speed computing, has been strained to accommodate the agency's technology needs, he said.

The Camp Springs facility has cement floors, Uccellini said, and running electricity and communication hookups to offices requires drilling through the cement. "We've had to have safety inspectors come up every time we drill a new hole because there are so many holes in the floor now," he said.

The new building will trade this Swiss cheese for raised flooring that will provide ready access to building infrastructure. Walls and partitions, as well as cabling, will be flexible to allow the agencies to change configurations quickly and inexpensively.

Uccellini also said he sees the project as a means to bring top scientific talent to the agency. He said he has sometimes struggled to attract scientists to a visiting scholars program at the centers. In the late 1990s, he said, budget pressures and the work environment -- dingy office space in a building nestled among used car lots -- led scientists from the international community to back out of planned guest stints. Two renowned scientists already have inquired about visiting to do research in the new facility, taking advantage of 40 spaces set aside for visitors.

Proximity to the University of Maryland is also a major asset to the research center, Uccellini said, noting that location typically allows a government research group to tap into the wider academic and commercial research communities, and to communicate new findings into the scientific community faster.

Tom Olmstead, vice president and national director of government programs for the Opus Group, a commercial builder, highlighted various design standards the facility had to meet for government use. Based on requirements of the Interagency Security Committee, the property is surrounded by fencing, with minimum setbacks between vehicular areas and the building and blast and anti-terrorism protection, he said.

He also described features that earned the building a silver rating in the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) system. High efficiency motors for the heating and cooling systems will reduce energy costs, as will shading and insulating glass, and a design that lets daylight into every office, placing no work station more than 40 feet from a window.

The site also is water sensitive, Olmstead says, with ponds to filter runoff and a two and a half story waterfall from the roof on rainy days. A green roof, seeded with low-maintenance plants, will insulate the building to reduce heating costs.

The General Services Administration, which will lease the building to NOAA, said the high environmental standard is nothing new. Since 2000, its guidance has included LEED certification on new buildings and major renovations.

This building is expected to cost about $70 million, depending on final design decisions, and Olmstead said the higher upfront cost of the green design and building process will be recouped through efficiency gains within five to eight years, depending on energy prices and other factors.

"In the past two to three years, attaining a LEED silver rating has become a lot easier and a lot less expensive, because there's been a blossoming of products and information in the marketplace," Olmstead said. He largely credited GSA's adoption of the standard, as well as similar building performance programs at the Defense Department, for the change.

"The government is probably leading the LEED process," Olmstead said. "GSA has made this very viable."