Florida Advanced Manufacturing Research Center

OWNER

Osceola County

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Construction Cost
$44.4 million

Completion Date
Summer 2017

Project Size
100,000 SF

Innovation
A series of structural design optimizations were used to reduce costs while meeting stringent performance requirements.

Florida Advanced Manufacturing Research Center

Kissimmee
Florida

The Florida Advanced Manufacturing Research Center (FAMRC) will help accelerate high tech research and advanced manufacturing in the state of Florida. FAMRC allows university researchers to work directly with manufacturers in order to streamline the development and introduce new technology into the marketplace more quickly. The facility has the ability to create next generation technology, including smart sensors and advanced materials.

The two-story semiconductor research and manufacturing facility is located on approximately 20 acres and includes clean rooms, administrative space, laboratories, and general building support space. Containing highly sensitive equipment, it requires more stringent vibration control than a standard building. The facility also includes an electron microscope which must be kept a certain distance from any metal, including the steel rebar used to strengthen concrete throughout the building.

Walter P Moore engineers worked to optimize the building’s design in order to reduce construction costs while meeting required vibration control in the clean rooms by adding shear walls to the floor below. Our team also called for an epoxy coating on all steel near the electron microscope so as not to interfere with its function. We were also able to reduce costs by optimizing the cleanroom’s waffle slab design in order to utilize reusable forms rather than highly expensive, single-use forms. These optimizations saved approximately $1.2 million.