Schmidt Consulting Group, Inc. | Consulting Engineers | Military Support Facilities | Ocean Sciences Laboratory

Photograph Courtesy of Roy Anderson Corp.

The Ocean Sciences Laboratory is was Design/Build project that provided a new, $42.6 million, 171,600 square foot secure facility with associated data processing and administrative support to the Ocean Sciences and Engineering Laboratory, the Meteorology and Oceanography Enterprise Engineering Laboratory, and Oceanographic Equipment Repair Facilities at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The facility is required to support 263 persons and will consolidate numerous functions and people from various buildings.

The project includes spaces for administration, training, meetings, and laboratories with associated storage, shipping, and receiving functions. The building includes Classified areas, which are designated as Secure Rooms (Open Secret Storage), along with Unclassified areas including common spaces for restrooms, conference/training rooms, and a vending/break room area. The Facility is classified as a "Primary Gathering Building" according to Anti-terrorism (AT) criteria.

The Ocean Sciences Laboratory will be used to accomplish engineering, system design, system development, system integration, test and evaluation, and maintenance of marine systems. Some of the components of the new facility include the Shipboard Configuration Center, the Ocean Sensor Calibration Laboratory, an oceanographic equipment repair facility, the Systems Integration Laboratory, the Engineering Sonar Lab, and the Mechanical Lab.

The laboratory is served by two, 260-ton chillers; two, 2,000,000 BTU per hour boilers; and a 1500 kilo-watt back-up diesel generator. Site work consisted of a total of 600, 55 foot and 65 foot auger cast piles. The building slab was placed with 5,200 cubic yards of 4,000 pounds-per-square-inch (psi) concrete, with a thickness ranging from 9-inches to 12-inches. A 100,000 square foot ramp area was constructed with 650 psi flex mix design concrete. Additionally, the building consists of 1,000,000 linear feet, or almost 190 miles of communications and data cabling.

Schmidt Consulting Group, Inc., along with Studio South Architects and the Roy Anderson Corporation (Contractor), served on the project team for OSL. SDA provided Mechanical, Plumbing, Electrical, Communications, and Structural design services for the project. Regarding our performance, Paul Mullins, the government construction manager for the Resident Officer in Charge of Construction (ROICC), had this to say:

"The contractor's design team, Studio South Architects of Biloxi, MS and Schmidt Consulting Group, Inc., of Pensacola, FL spend a tremendous amount of time coordinating with NAVO. They really covered all mission requirements from overall square footage to the placement of outlets on the wall."

John C. Stennis Space Center | Military Support Facilities