In Oklahoma City, Guernsey flies with Boeing
The Boeing Co. office and laboratory building, designed by Guernsey, is shown at 6811 SE 59 on the Boeing campus just off Tinker Air Force Base. [PHOTO PROVIDED BY GUERNSEY]
Guernsey is getting a big bounce from Boeing.
The firm's engineering and architecture work on Boeing Co.'s $50 million 2015-2016 expansion, where "physical secrecy and security" was a primary design driver, garnered it a National Recognition Award from the American Council of Engineering Companies.
Guernsey will accept the award at a black-tie gala April 25 in Washington, D.C. It comes after Guernsey landed ACES Oklahoma's Grand Conceptor Award for 2016.
But the biggest boost could come from within the nearly 90-year-old firm, which has been in Oklahoma City since founder C.H. Guernsey Sr. moved it here from Cherokee in 1942.
Work on the two-story, 316,000-square-foot, tornado-resistant office and laboratory building at 6811 SE 59, north of Boeing's other two buildings just off of Tinker Air Force Base, taught Guernsey "what we're capable of as a company," said project manager Bob McCombs, a civil engineer.
McCombs said the sense of accomplishment spread beyond the 20 or so engineers, architects and other specialists who worked on the project, which consolidated 30 Boeing laboratories from St. Louis, Seattle and Long Beach, Calif.
"This was the largest single (new construction) building that Guernsey has worked on — ever," he said.
Of course, it was more than large. It wasn't a 316,000-square-foot warehouse, after all.
"The building brings together many decades of programs and equipment from all over the U.S. serving different roles for a wide variety of aeronautical machinery," McCombs said in material submitted with the project for judging.
"Over time these programs were utilizing and modifying their existing facilities to fit their needs. With this project these laboratories are now sharing the same home while maintaining their physical and technological uniqueness."
The biggest test, he said, was meeting Boeing's timing and hard deadlines.
Design was completed in 20 weeks.
"Astonishing," Boeing project administrator Kevin Davis said in a letter of support also submitted to judges.
Guernsey, which has only actively sought big jobs in its hometown for the past decade or so, felt the glare of the public light from the start.
"This expansion was programmed to bring over 800 high-paying engineering and technical jobs to the greater Oklahoma City area, greatly impacting the local economy," McCombs said.
The project kicked off April 1, 2015, with one space to be complete and ready for equipment by May 1, 2016, and the rest of the building done in July.
Designing a hardened high-tech facility in the bull's-eye of Tornado Alley presented further challenges. Boeing wanted the building to be able to withstand an EF4 tornado — wind speeds up to 200 mph.
That meant limiting the number of exterior doors and windows, especially on the ground floor, precast concrete wall panels for the exterior, and a composite concrete-filled metal deck supported by structural steel framing at the roof level.
"While not challenging in and of itself, the schedule necessitated that the structural elements be designed and in production before the final design of the building was complete," McCombs said. "The other architectural and engineering disciplines then 'worked around' the structural elements as the design of the building was completed."
Guernsey's institutional expertise has been rooted in electrical engineering since the late 1930s, when Curtis Harold Guernsey Sr. landed contracts across western Oklahoma in the heyday of rural electrification.
Fitting, because the Boeing building had to be big on power.
The electrical system needed to be "tightly coordinated" and designed for "maximum redundancy and robustness," McCombs wrote.
It relies on multiple feeds from several directions rather than on-site emergency power generation. That took especially close consultation with Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co.
Further, each of the 30 labs had its own specific requirements for power and grounding.
"Many of these requirements were in direct conflict with one another," Davis wrote in the letter from Boeing.
That required extensive engineering coordination as well as special structural design considerations for a facility needing much more power than a typical building of comparable size.
"To provide this amount of power, Guernsey had to design and utilize some of the largest available electrical distribution equipment and fit it into the allotted space so as to not lose valuable, usable space," McCombs wrote.
The aviation equipment needed a special high-frequency power distribution system requiring "special design consideration that is unique to the aerospace industry," he wrote.
"Guernsey's designers and engineers had to carefully consider many electrical characteristics of materials used for the construction as well as new equipment available and its use with the owners' existing legacy equipment."
Guernsey considers its work on the Boeing building, which was finished on time and on budget, as a legacy project.
"The design of the building, as well as the type of client and the personnel that will occupy it, will help generate excitement for the field of engineering for the next generation of engineers, and many more to follow, McCombs wrote.
More than a dozen Guernsey teams worked on the Boeing project: architectural design, interior design, landscape architecture, master planning, sustainable design, civil engineering, electrical engineering, environmental engineering, fire protection engineering, mechanical engineering, cost estimating, environmental studies and investigations, and permitting and regulatory compliance.