The building will include office and meeting spaces for food and agricultural organizations whose work will complement the other happenings that will take place at the National Western Center.

Window and masonry restoration work began in June, and construction work will be phased on the building’s three connected wings, originally constructed in 1898, 1916, and 1919.

Stantec is the project’s architect-of-record. Construction is scheduled for completion in late 2025 in time for the annual National Western Stock Show in January 2026.

Northern Border Project Upgrades 1960s Facility

The General Services Administration has awarded McGough Construction a $94-million design-build contract to modernize the Dunseith Land Port of Entry in Dunseith, N.D. Built in 1961, the Dunseith facility is located near the U.S.-Canadian border along U.S. Route 281. Construction will include a new main port building, commercial and non-commercial primary and secondary inspection areas as well as outbound inspection areas.

The net-zero, all-electric and LEED Gold certified building will also be able to better handle visitor queuing for the nearby International Peace Garden park.

According to GSA, $27 million in Inflation Reduction Act funding will pay for low embodied carbon concrete, steel and glass, along with emerging and sustainable technologies such as a new electric boiler and solar photovoltaic array. The balance of the project’s funding will come from the Infrastructure Innovation and Jobs Act and the GSA’s reimbursable services program. Construction is planned to start in May 2025 and conclude in October 2028.

Fortis to Build $800M Meta Data Center in Wyoming

Cheyenne, Wyo., will be home to a 715,000-sq-ft Meta data center campus, which is expected to create 100 jobs upon completion.
Rendering courtesy of Meta

Fortis Construction, with offices in Portland, Ore., and Draper, Utah, has been tapped to build Meta’s new 715,000-sq-ft campus at the High Plains Business Park in Cheyenne, Wyo. This will be the contractor’s seventh data center campus constructed for Meta. An estimated 1,000 workers will be on the 960-acre site at the project’s peak, according to the project announcement.

Meta will work with Black Hills Energy to add new resources to the grid, including renewables. Meta has a global goal to restore more water than it consumes by 2030, and, as part of this plan, the owner of Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp will partner with Laramie County Conservation District to help restore Crow Creek, which serves Laramie County, Wyo., and recharges Wyoming’s Ogallala Aquifer.

Engineering Nonprofits Merge to Increase Impact

Two engineering nonprofits staffed by thousands of industry volunteer practitioners, students and others—Engineers Without Borders USA and Engineering World Health—have combined operations to strengthen their capacity to build infrastructure in resource-poor global communities.

Founded in 2002 by a civil engineering professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, EWB-USA has grown from a handful of engineers to 14,000 volunteers working on 350 engineering projects across the globe. Volunteer engineers and biomedical professionals working with EWH have installed and repaired life-saving equipment in resource-poor hospitals in Asia, Africa and Latin America, providing more than $30 million in services since 2004.

According to Boris Martin, CEO of EWB-USA, the merger will integrate EWH biomedical equipment and technical training into EWB-USA sustainable infrastructure development in water supply, sanitation, energy, agriculture and other projects. “During the pandemic, it became clear that the state of health care in some of the communities [where EWB-USA operates] is really poor,” Martin says. This realization led to conversations between the two groups on how to leverage more expertise in installing and repairing life-saving equipment across the U.S. and internationally to build sustainable communities.

Project Team Hits Milestone on $80M Steam Plant at Utah’s Hill AFB

A new temporary boiler plant for the Hill Air Force Base steam plant renovation was recently constructed in under 90 days. The installation marks a pivotal moment in the construction of the $80-million boiler plant project as it takes the existing boilers with high emissions offline and significantly reduces the base’s environmental footprint. A joint venture of SAW Contracting and Greenland Enterprises is leading the design-build project. RMF is the designer-of-record for the steam plant renovation project, located between the Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake in Davis County, Utah.

The existing building, constructed in multiple phases over the past 80 years, is also undergoing full-scale seismic upgrades to provide reliable operation into the future.

Judge Blocks Rule Limiting Oil Well Methane Emissions

A federal judge in North Dakota temporarily blocked a new federal rule to reduce natural gas leaks during fossil fuel drilling while a legal challenge brought by North Dakota, Montana, Texas, Wyoming and Utah is weighed. The U.S. Dept. of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) published the rule earlier this year. It would require oil and gas lease operators to take steps to avoid waste, such as implementing leak repair and detection efforts as well as limit gas venting and flaring. BLM officials say the percentage of natural gas lost to venting and flaring has more than doubled as the pace of oil and gas development on public land has expanded over the past several decades. The rule’s limits on flaring would generate more than $50 million in royalties each year, according to the agency.