New details are emerging about the largest single-site construction project in the history of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
The $182 million Intelligence Production Center for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) at the base is expected to be move-in ready by Jan. 16, 2025. That's roughly 1,100 days of construction from when the project received a "Notice to Proceed" (NTP) on Sept. 4, according to the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service (DVIDS).
The nearly 256,000-square-foot production center will be the office work space for more than 900 people associated with NASIC, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said. It will be a new building combined with elements of renovation, according to Steve Farkus, project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Louisville District.
“Central to the work of this project is providing a safe and secure environment very close to the new construction, where the NASIC staff will continue to function in their duties at a very high level of performance," Farkus told DVIDS.
The project reinforces the value Wright-Patt holds in the national defense community.
"This much needed expansion will help serve not only our community but also our national security, as the work done at NASIC is critical to our intelligence operations," U.S. Rep. Mike Turner (R-Dayton) said. "I am pleased to see this expansion moving ahead, and I look forward to the official groundbreaking on this project.”
Elaine Bryant, executive vice president of aerospace and defense for the Dayton Development Coalition, said NASIC's "increasingly critical role in our country's defense of air and space highlights the importance of this project."
"We will continue to work with the Air Force, Space Force and our Congressional delegation to support the NASIC expansion and ensure the Air Force and Space Force have the necessary resources and skilled talent to move this project forward," Bryant said.
Army Corps of Engineers Louisville will oversee construction, with southwest Ohio-based Messer Construction Co. serving as the prime contractor. Messer, which has regional offices in Dayton, Cincinnati and Louisville, Kentucky, recently received a $126 million contract for the project.
“The NASIC project means a lot to us as a local builder that has called Dayton home for the past 20 years,” Messer Vice President Matt Schnelle said in August. “This is our largest contract with Wright-Patterson in our long history working on base, and we look forward to delivering it with local resources.”
The project was awarded Aug. 12, 2020, and the construction duration is 1,095 days from a Sept. 4 Notice to Proceed, but this project has complicated phasing, Farkus said.
“The nature of the work is that after construction is complete, NASIC and the Defense Intelligence Agency validate and conduct burn-in testing of equipment,” Farkus said. “We actually issue a second NTP to Messer Construction. They then have 60 days to connect the new project to existing buildings. Currently, our schedule has Jan. 16, 2025, as the actual date for the NASIC staff to move into their new space.”
Farkus indicated the team learned early on in the design process this was not normal office space; rather it is in a unique setting, where specialized work is to be conducted.
“We will increase their capacity to protect our fighting forces all over the world,” Farkus said. “The intelligence NASIC collects and analyzes saves lives.”
With this magnitude of a project, one of the biggest challenges has been taking the mission requirements the organization has and presenting a design that meets their needs.
“Open and frequent dialogue contributed to overcoming the challenges,” Farkus said. “We have worked to create a culture of very candid and open conversation.”
That transparent communication played a major factor in progressing the project forward.
“We were able to maintain our design schedule and overcome some technical challenges in the actual details the government received," Frakus said. "The scale of the work for this project is gigantic, and we did not let that slow down our efforts for problem-solving. We were able to hit the mark on our Ready to Advertise milestone, and construction award is, in fact, getting to our construction award date a week earlier than has been projected a year out.”
This project had a diverse group of stakeholders come together over the course of years to develop one of the best projects to facilitate the collection and analysis of intelligence data, according to Farkus.
“I’m very appreciative of the leadership across all the organizations who have stayed engaged and worked with us and resourced the team with what we needed to get this accomplished,” Farkus said.
NASIC is the Department of Defense’s primary source for foreign air and space threat analysis. NASIC is the Air Force’s service intelligence center and the nation’s air and space intelligence center.
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is Ohio's largest single-site employer with 30,500 employees. It has a $15.4 billion economic impact.
2020 local employees
| Rank | Prior Rank | Company |
|---|---|---|
1 | 1 | Wright-Patterson Air Force Base |
2 | 3 | Kettering Health Network |
3 | 2 | Premier Health |