NOAA Opens High Performance Computing Center in Fairmont, WV

Earlier this year, Mid-Atlantic PBS completed the build out for a 54,000 square foot Environmental Security Computing Center for the U.S. National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Fairmont, WV.  Funded through the Recovery Act of 2009, this $25M project provided NOAA with “Class A” office space and a high performance computing system (HPC).  

Because the HPC is an important entity supporting NOAA’s weather and climate modeling research and development programs, an extremely accelerated schedule was developed for this mission-critical project.  In addition to the timetable constraints, this unique space requires significant HVAC and electrical infrastructure to support the heavy power and cooling loads generated by the HPC systems.  The Fairmont facility development was also closely integrated with other climate modeling facilities that offer research collaboration.  These projects utilize a high speed network dedicated to sharing supercomputer data capabilities—another unique requirement of this specialized project.

GSA was committed to understanding NOAA’s specialized requirements and producing a facility that would meet these mission-critical needs.  With so much at stake, the GSA project team decided it was critical to promote competition on tenant improvement pricing upfront.  The team took an innovative approach to the Best Value Trade-off Source Selection methodology, and designed the Solicitation for Offers (SFO) as a “Turnkey SFO” in which both the lease contract and the TI pricing would be negotiated and awarded simultaneously.  This method yielded a project which met NOAA’s deadline and stayed within budget.

In just 13 months after lease award, the GSA and NOAA team, the lessor and the lessor’s contractors successfully completed the design and alterations of the existing building to house the HPC system, including all the supporting infrastructure and specialty HVAC and electrical components.  The space was designed to achieve a low power utilization efficiency rating (PUE rating), and the team is on track to achieve its sustainability goal of certification through the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design® (LEED) program for Commercial Interiors.

"Acquiring a leased facility and fitting up a five megawatt capacity HPC data center in this short amount of time was a tremendous challenge,” said Darren Smith, NOAA’s project director for the new facility.  “GSA stepped up to meet NOAA's aggressive schedule and deliver on time and within budget for a complex, highly technical project.  Our entire government team demonstrated outstanding commitment, expertise, and ingenuity.  GSA's recommendation of the Turnkey SFO was a critical decision that helped make the project successful."

GSA’s wealth of expertise contributes to developing innovative solutions for challenging space requirements in support of our customer agencies’ missions and sustainability goals.  

This article is part of the Summer 2012 issue of the FOCUS newsletter. Please visit the Focus Newsletter page to read our newsletter. To subscribe to FOCUS, complete the online subscription form.