National Personnel Records Center

OWNER

General Services Administration

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Size: 507,000 SF

Architect: HKS

Feature: LEED certified

Delivery Method: Design-Build

National Personnel Records Center

St. Louis
Missouri

Driven by the mission of preserving and protecting records housed there, the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) opened in 2011. The facility contains over 50 million personnel records of military and civil service federal employees, dating from the early 20th century to the 1970s. The NPRC is the largest national archives facility outside of the Washington, D.C. area.

Delivered through a design-build leaseback procurement, the NPRC includes a state-of-the-art file preservation laboratory, large public research room and a multi-purpose room for meeting and public outreach. The records storage area has three levels of high-density shelving and catwalk grating for 385,000 shelves on 29 foot tall stacks. The facility includes robust environmental controls for protection of sensitive and historic records.

In addition to providing easy access to records, safety and security were crucial goals of the facility. Due to the extremely sensitive archives and personal and military files that are housed in the facility, several structural secure design measures were implemented. The lateral structural system utilized custom tilt-up wall panels designed to provide progressive collapse resistance as well as a more ductile system for seismic, wind, and blast resistance.