Owner: City of Gainesville

Size: 222,172 SF | 73 Acres

Delivery: Construction Manager at Risk

Description: This Operations Center houses all of GRU’s operations, from technical to maintenance.  A needs study was part of the programming phase for Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) for the design of their new 53-Acre, 9 building campus in Gainesville, Florida. This study included interviews with all departments to determine space, functional needs, allocation for future building and parking growth, construction budget review, and subsequent programming for the entire facility based on the findings of the initial study. 

Buildings 1-4 house all of the various utility functions for GRU: electric, substation, relay, gas & electric measurement, fiber optic communications, water and wastewater which all require direct access to the equipment yard. Adjacent to the storage and staging areas are workshops, followed by the circulation core and offices. The design takes into consideration a separation of the public spaces from operation intense portions of the buildings.

Building 5: Materials & Stores. The Materials and Stores building is designed to combine the just in time delivery method of utility construction materials and a percentage of long term/ long lead items required for reliability into as small a footprint as possible.

Building 6: Apparatus Shops.  The Apparatus shop is the central test and repair shop for all of the GRU’s metering equipment.   This building also contains a machine shop, tool repair shop, electrical safety goods test and calibration lab and a paint booth.

Building 7: Safety & Training. The Safety and Training building is designed to remove GRU employees from their daily workstations during safety training.  Three large training rooms with audio visual capability combine to make one large meeting space (gymnasium dimensions) to conduct skills training, CPR, fitness training and journeyman courses. The building is also designed to serve as an emergency operations center during storm response events with a hardened structure and redundant systems.  

Building 8: System Control Building. This building serves as the control hub for the entire East Gainesville power grid.  As such it was designed with high-level security and system redundancy to ensure uninterrupted operational capability.  The building contains control centers with electronic displays, data center, administrative offices, and controlled gallery observation space.  It is served electrically from 2 independent sources and emergency backup generator, backup HVAC equipment, and is designed with additional building security.