A Rhode Island firm this month started construction on a design-build project for a Navy Supply Corps School at the Newport Naval Station, a $25.8 million development.
The 58,000-square-foot school will be adjacent to the Naval War College, said Walter J. Augustyn, project manager with H.V. Collins Co. With a brick veneer and a steel frame, the two-story building has been designed to mesh well with the surrounding buildings. For that design, H.V. Collins hired Providence firm Edward Rowse Architects.
Along with classrooms, there will be office and conference space, Augustyn said.
Historically, the U.S. Navy had employed a group of staff engineers and designers to work through its own projects, instead of using an outside firm, Augustyn said.
“Then, they would essentially issue a complete set of drawings and specs and you would do construction based on those documents,” he said. “They would do the design work and the engineering themselves. But they’re now looking to … speed the [development], so they’re putting it out as a design-build process.”
The naval engineers and designers who formerly worked on constructing the project are now part of the Navy Review Board, which acts as a sort of planning board for naval campuses.
But they’re a little more exacting than a normal town planning board, because they usually know just as much about the parcel as the designers, Augustyn said. That makes them tough critics. “Actually it’s a lot worse,” than a town planning board, he joked, adding that “the good part about it is that they were the ones who were actually involved …early on, so they’re able to know a little bit more than we do about the rationale of the” original design of naval campuses.
Other public entities, such as the Providence Public School District, are also turning more frequently to single contracts for design and construction, he said.
“For the reason of expediency, they’re trying to get the jobs completed as quickly as possible,” he said. “The good thing about it is that it allows us to fast-track a lot of things and to focus the architects and engineers.”
In Newport, the school will be a replacement for the current Naval Supply Corps School and Center for Service Support, which operates in Athens, Ga. (READ MORE) According to the Newport Naval Station, the school will be relocated to the Ocean State as part of a 2005 Base Realignment and Closure recommendation.
The first phase of the project – the school – is expected to be completed early in 2010. After that, the firm will build a 100-car parking lot and renovate a 27,000-square-foot wood-frame Quonset hut that will be used by a Marine Detachment facility.
In a recent statement, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, a member of the Armed Services Committee and the Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, said the Naval Supply Corps was created 213 years ago. “Throughout every major engagement since then, both hostile and humanitarian, the Naval Supply Corps has ensured that the United States Navy has been able to conduct sustained operations – on land, air or sea – in any area of the world,” he said.
The total number of students who will be taught annually at Naval Station Newport will jump by more than 60 percent, from 9,500 to 16,000, Reed said.
About 100 active-duty staff jobs and 80 civilian positions will be created by the construction, according to Reed’s office.
H.V. Collins, which was awarded the naval contract on Oct. 30, has recently completed both the Ponaganset Middle School for the Foster Glocester Regional School District and the Gorham School in Providence and is now working on two Tiverton schools. The firm, based on Gano Street in Providence, has been operating in Rhode Island since 1924. •
