Northrop Grumman’s Building 100 in St. Augustine, FL has been awarded LEED® Gold Certification. Building 100, the aerospace company’s new 366,000-square-foot manufacturing center for the U.S. Navy’s E-2D Advanced Hawkeye aircraft, was designed and constructed by The Austin Company. The facility received a total of 68 LEED credits out of the 73 pursued.
As a large, highly specialized manufacturing building, the facility faced multiple challenges to achieving a LEED Gold Certification. The project’s team prevailed, however, and numerous design approaches were implemented to design the facility to be as environmentally friendly as possible.
Representative features include:
- Solar power generation via a film applied directly onto the insulated metal-panel roof system. The solar photovoltaic system generates an average of 312 kilowatts of power each day, offsetting a significant amount of the facility’s power requirements.
- A high level of overall energy and water efficiency, including a high-performance building envelope, premium efficiency mechanical equipment, water-efficient plumbing fixtures, and LED lighting. Overall, the building is 40% more efficient (in terms of energy operating cost) than a standard facility of this type.
- Translucent panels in the manufacturing high bay provide natural light. Although no LEED® credits were awarded for this design, it is a very positive feature of the building and provides an enhanced feeling of openness to the space.
- Preserved wetlands and trees that function as part of the site’s drainage system. Combined with a new retention pond, these ecological systems provide irrigation to the site’s native landscaping and add to the feel of the outdoor environment.
- Concrete parking areas provide lower heat island effect.
- Showers and lockers for employees who bike to work and electric vehicle charging stations for those who drive.
- Locally sourced construction materials (within 500 miles of the project).
“It was certainly a full team effort,” stated Ken Stone, Project Executive. “The LEED system is not set up for this kind of project to achieve Silver, let alone Gold. It took a lot of dedicated work to design, engineer and implement the LEED® features and performance characteristics to hit the Gold level.”
Building 100 was also awarded a 2016 Engineering News Record Regional Best Projects Award of Merit. In 2015, Northrop Grumman’s Building 228 in Melbourne, FL earned LEED® Silver Certification.
