Contractor North Wind Group has finished putting up the structural steel for a 60,000-square-foot offsite research facility it is building for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site at the University of South Carolina-Aiken, the agency said Monday.
“Since construction started about eight months ago, we have been making substantial progress,” on the Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative, Nixon Peralta, the DOE-Savannah River deputy federal project director, said in a news release.
The facility is scheduled for completion in June 2025, according to the release. The Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative is designed to provide modern lab facilities and office space, with a focus on chemical and material manufacturing. DOE officials have said the offsite location means experts and others won’t need DOE security clearance to use the facility. The center should offer “a more open environment” for research, according to DOE.
Ground was broken on the project in April 2022 about a year after Idaho-based North Wind won a $50-million contract for the work.
