Hensel Phelps is performing the earthwork, foundation and structural work to relocate Los Alamos County’s storage facilities.

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As New Mexico’s Los Alamos County becomes more populated, one of its main roads, Trinity Drive, has become an attractive destination for real estate development. A private developer is building condominiums and retail establishments on the 43-acre property, which means the county and school district’s warehouses and storage facilities that previously occupied the area are being relocated near the town’s airport in a valley called the airport basin.

The Airport Basin relocation project began in mid 2004 and should end in early 2010. Contractor Hensel Phelps is handling the $54 million assignment, which includes flattening 157,000 square feet of bumpy terrain. Currently in the earthwork, foundation and structural work phase, the company will construct seven buildings to provide space for industrial storage and maintenance facilities, among other utilities.

When finished, the county and school district will share maintenance resources and will use buildings that, in compliance with the county’s green building resolution, should receive a LEED silver certification at the very least. In a recent interview with U.S. Business Review, David Apple, the county’s engineering project manager for the site, shared details about the unfolding assignment.

U.S. Business Review: Have you experienced any challenges with the project so far?
David Apple: The site had a lot of challenges, (such as) the terrain and the topography (and) the cost associated with the earthwork. The current location is a 35-acre site that is part of a 550-acre parcel transferred to the county on the airport basin site, which is described as a bowl. There’s a very steep road we’re having built down to our site. They had to do a lot of excavating from the edges of the site to fill in the drainage in the center to get a large enough level area to accommodate the building and storage needs we have.

The total budget is $54 million for (contractor) Hensel Phelps. The project has some other costs outside what Hensel Phelps is doing, such as bringing fiber optics for our county needs down there onsite. There are two and a half miles of fiber optics, some which are shared with other county projects along the way.

Getting the county fiber optics down there was about another $2.5 million.

Another part of another adjacent project is transferring some land along the highway. Part of the development agreement for that parcel was to construct an entrance to serve three major projects. Part of the cost of that road is being shared by the two other major users of that entrance. We didn’t want to land lock ourselves with the basin. The highway transportation department agreed to one entrance that would be there for all the projects. It was a major milestone to get this access approved by the department of transportation. So, access was a challenge.

USBR: What sustainable features will the buildings have?
DA: The County passed a high performance green building resolution in 2006 that all the new county facilities that will be 500,000 square feet and larger have to be LEED silver. So, the airport basin’s buildings will be LEED silver at a minimum.

USBR: I understand you are sharing many resources with the school district to save money. Some examples?
DA: (We’re sharing) the consolidated warehouse and fleet maintenance building. It adds kind of a new twist to the project. The county is going to inherit some of the schools’ warehouse staff, who we will hire to become County employees, and we’ll share the warehouse.

Similar things are going on with the fleet vehicle maintenance facility. The county transit system encompasses anything from vans to school buses. The school has a lot of construction equipment and a lot of maintenance vehicles. We decided to co-locate the fleet maintenance and have some shared welding shops and shared tire-changing equipment. We’ll have one lubrication system instead of the schools having their own.

It saves money by not having to build two buildings to do the same thing. We’re just absorbing staff. It’s more efficient. There will be some sharing of maintenance bays. There is also a fuel facility down there that currently the schools have been getting gas and diesel from. We’ve already been sharing that.