The U.S. Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton, Calif., about 38 miles north of San Diego, needed a new temporary lodging facility to serve as overflow accommodation for the families of its Navy personnel and it needed one built fast. The families were currently forced to use expensive hotels in the nearby city, which is a popular tourist and convention destination.
A state-of-the-art four-story, 64,000-square-foot, 69-room facility was recently inaugurated with a ceremonial ribbon cutting, having been built in a record eight months, within the $14.8 million budget allocated and with a LEED® Silver rating.
Hundreds of people gathered to witness what base officials referred to as the iconic opening of an environmental keystone facility. “This facility is the new platinum standard for the Marine Corps and possibly for the entire Department of Defense,” said commanding officer Col. James B. Seaton, III, in a statement to Camp Pendleton’s military newspaper. “There is nothing that even begins to approximate what we have here.”
While it looks and feels like a commercial hotel, the structure boasts exceptional strength and safety features such as collapse prevention and blast resistance. The structure contains 25 percent pre- and post-consumer recycled material and, in the event of demolition, is 100 percent recyclable.
This project has been so successful that it may be replicated at other military bases across the nation. Currently, the demand for temporary on-base housing is greater than the supply. Recognizing that building good quality, lower cost housing in short order while grappling with budget constraints is not its core competency, the military relies on the private sector for innovative solutions.
Revolutionary green “wall system” enables speed to market
In tune with the trend of outsourcing military construction to the private sector, Camp Pendleton awarded the temporary lodging contract to Carlsbad, Calif.-based design-build contractor RQ Construction. During construction, a new wall system from San Diego-based Ecolite Concrete was utilized. This system merges two separate construction techniques into one, resulting in an expedited manufacturing process. Combining cold-formed steel frames with a proprietary lightweight concrete technology enables Ecolite to manufacture the walls off-site, in half the time and with considerable cost savings and minimal job site disturbance when compared to traditional wood framed buildings.
Just as windows, door frames and roof trusses are manufactured off-site, Ecolite’s technology and custom EcoCAD software makes it possible for the walls to be designed, pre-engineered and produced off-site while construction is underway on site.
“The Camp Pendleton project was a milestone for Ecolite and us. This is best-in-class housing facility for the Marine Corps. We won the project first and foremost because of the advantages the wall system gave us in terms of turnaround time and lower costs,” says George Rogers, RQ Construction’s CEO, adding, “It looks like a four star hotel. Normally, such a project would have taken 14 months to complete. We built it in eight months and brought it in within budget.”
Pre-engineered, cured on tilt-beds and transported on-site
The wall panels for the Camp Pendleton project were designed and manufactured at RQ Construction’s Moreno Valley plant, since it is also Ecolite’s licensee for the western region.
The off-site process began with the project plans being modeled and panelized on EcoCAD, its proprietary modeling software, at the same time that the foundation was being laid on-site at Camp Pendleton. Once the shop drawings were approved, the information was sent to automated roll-forming equipment that produces pre-punched, notched and labeled cold-formed steel framing members.
To fabricate the wall panels, the steel frames were “snapped” into place and secured with screws. The high-performance steel lath was attached to the assembled frames to provide strength and integrity to the concrete. Depending on the design requirements of specific wall panels, X-bracing, block outs, electrical outlets and hold-downs were installed.
Once complete, the framed panel was moved to the pouring beds and readied for the proprietary concrete mix, which combines Portland cement with fly ash and a post-consumer recycled glass additive. This mixture is self leveling and was pumped from a compact batching plant to the pouring beds in a continuous manner.
The concrete was smoothed and finished before it was cured on beds that tilted up for easy removal. The panels were stripped and moved to storage via cranes or forklifts. For shipment, they were strapped to A-frames and loaded onto flatbed trailers.
Once on site, the panels were positioned and secured to the foundation with hold-downs and fasteners. The entire process, from design to erection of walls, took three months with some interruptions, according to Peter Pizzo, the project manager at RQ Construction.
“The Marine Corps base officials had a wish list of specific requirements and we were able to give them everything they wanted,” says Rogers.
Padma Nagappan is a San Diego-based freelance business writer who focuses on sustainable technologies.