Alabama-based Caddell Construction will build a new office building in Albuquerque for more than 1,000 National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) employees under a contract worth a little under $150 million, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced this week.
The Army Corps is procuring construction services for the planned Albuquerque Complex and managing the contract. The NNSA is paying the construction bills for the facility, which will be located on Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. The new complex will replace 25 older facilities on the base, some of which date to World War II.
The Corps posted Caddell’s award on line late Tuesday. A few hours before the contract award dropped, NNSA announced it had authorized construction to start at Albuquerque.
The NNSA thinks it will cost about $200 million to finish the new office building by June 2023, according to the agency’s 2019 budget request. However, Congress capped the cost of the facility at about $175 million in the the 2018 omnibus spending bill signed in March. Besides pay to build the new office, the Department of Energy also has to pay to demolish the old structures it will will replace.
NNSA expected construction to proceed quickly, according to the agency’s 2019 budget request. Spending should peak this year at $98 million, the amount appropriated for the complex in the 2018 omnibus budget bill. For 2019, the administration requested $49 million.
Federal procurement records show Caddell has won nine government construction contracts worth a little more than $1.5 billion combined since 2013: two for the Navy, two for the Army, and five for the State Department.
The Navy contracts include a roughly $155-million award in 2014 to build a Nuclear Power Training Complex for submarine personnel at Joint Base Charleston in South Carolina.
Caddell’s State Department contracts include a roughly $550 million deal from 2017 to build a new U.S. embassy complex in Mexico City.
