Office - Award of Merit

Conquering numerous obstacles, Holder Construction Co. of Reston, Va., completed the $102 million Fannie Mae Data Center in Urbana, Md., within one year of breaking ground.

"To bring in $100 million in construction in under [the goal of] 13 months is an amazing feat," said one of the judges. "It was a very difficult project."

The complex 250,000-sq.-ft. facility includes a precast concrete, 60-watts-per-sq.-ft. data center that connects with a four-story, structural steel office building. Gensler … Architecture, Design & Planning Worldwide of New York designed the data center so Fannie Mae could increase its size to 125 watts per sq. ft. to accommodate future growth.

A disaster recovery center in the basement serves this facility and the Fannie Mae headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The project represented Fannie Mae's first use of a construction-manager-at-risk contract, which resulted in significant changes to the processes and procedures it had relied on for past projects.

Holder put together a team that exceeded the 6 percent minimum minority- and women-owned business goal set by Fannie Mae. The company contracted more than 17 percent of the trade work to minority and women firms.

Holder broke ground in November 2003 and stayed on track to complete the center one year later. Commissioning of the data center began in September.

Crews worked around the clock, through harsh winter conditions, on site preparation and foundation work. Francis O. Day Co. Inc. of Rockville, Md., handled the site development.

The data center is located on a 37.5-acre green-field site in an undeveloped industrial area about one-quarter mile from existing utilities. The team worked closely with local municipalities to meet the center's infrastructure needs. That work included new roads, utilities, power feeds and telecommunication wiring.

Fannie Mae incorporated new technologies into the design and construction, and Holder succeeded in constructing a U.S. Green Building Council LEED-certified data center. Data centers require significant electrical loads to provide adequate support for computers and redundancy, making them more difficult to certify under LEED guidelines.

The Fannie Mae data center has a 2N, dual, uninterrupted power supply to ensure critical operations will not shut down if an equipment failure occurs on any component in the facility. A 70,000-sq.-ft. central plant supports the computer rooms and contains 10 generators, six chillers and cooling towers, 27 air handling units, 30 uninterrupted power supply modules and a 175,000-gallon thermal storage tank.

To compensate for the high electrical loads, Holder exceeded standards in other areas, such as using brick originally installed at Fannie Mae's 1950s-era headquarters. Masons mixed older bricks with new bricks produced at the same plant as the original brick.

Holder upheld Fannie Mae's original goal to create a team, facilitate open communication and foster a do-what-it-takes culture. A third party evaluated strengths and weakness midway through the project, which allowed for midcourse corrections. By pulling together, Holder overcame expected and unexpected obstacles to bring the project in on time and within budget.

Click here for the Office-Award of Merit for Woodglen Park I

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