London-based Balfour Beatty broke ground on a $698 million operational mission building project for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, the company announced June 5 in a release sent to Construction Dive.
The job, which also includes an 854,000-square-foot building and multi-level, modular parking structure for more than 3,000 parking spaces, was awarded on a fixed-price contract in April 2022, with $83 million obligated at that time, according to the Department of Defense.
Included in the Balfour Beatty design-build team are Omaha, Nebraska-based engineering firm HDR, Upper Marlboro, Maryland-based mechanical engineering firm JCM Associates, Lanham, Maryland-based electrical contractor J.E. Richards and Chicago-based AEC firm exp Federal.
The facility will be named the Kenny Center after late former NSA employee Minnie M. Kenny, a cryptanalyst, educator and equal opportunity activist who won the CIA’s Distinguished Service Award.
Also known as East Campus Building #4, the facility will feature connector bridges to adjacent East Campus buildings, open office areas with large flexible floor plates, food service areas, additional retail spaces and further expansion of the East Campus utility network, according to the release.
“We are honored to be entrusted to construct The Kenny Center at Fort Meade,” said Dan Novack, Balfour Beatty president in the Mid-Atlantic, in the release. “Balfour Beatty, along with our industry partners, look forward to a successful delivery that provides USACE and the NSA with state-of-the-art facilities on the East Campus site further enhancing the critical and vital work of our nation’s defense operations.”
Balfour Beatty has culled several awards from the federal government within the past year — in February, the contractor was awarded a $242 million design-build contract by North Carolina DOT to improve the U.S. Highway 70 corridor. Additionally, it completed the $666 million I-35 project in south Dallas, known as the Southern Gateway, as part of a JV with Irving, Texas-based Fluor in November.
The Kenny Center project is scheduled for completion in 2026.
