Northrop Grumman Manufacturing Center of Excellence is LEED Gold Certified

St. Augustine, Florida –The Austin Company, a design, engineering, construction, and location consulting firm with offices nationally, has achieved LEED Gold Certification of Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems’ Building 100 in St. Augustine, Florida. This follows the 2015 award of LEED Silver Certification to Northrop Grumman’s Building 228 in Melbourne, Florida.

Building 100, Northrop Grumman’s new 366,000ft² manufacturing center for the U.S. Navy’s E-2D Advanced Hawkeye aircraft, was designed and constructed by Austin. 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 team’s commitment prevailed, however, and implemented numerous approaches to design the facility to be environmentally friendly. 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 312kW 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 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.”

Source: The Austin Co.