Under a design-build contract, Walbridge partnered with the design team of SSOE, Gala and Associates and Ghafari to deliver a three-year project that includes vehicle assembly, battery production and a supplier park. Additionally, the team aimed to minimize the carbon footprint of the manufacturing process, potentially achieving carbon neutrality. The megacampus was designed to add sustainable solutions, including the use of local renewable energy sources such as geothermal, solar and wind power.

BlueOval City was envisioned as a vertically integrated ecosystem for Ford to assemble an expanded lineup of electric F-Series vehicles, including a BlueOval SK battery plant, key suppliers and recycling. The Tennessee Electric Vehicle Center is Ford’s most sustainable and technically advanced vehicle assembly center to date. It was designed to be carbon neutral with zero waste to landfill once fully operational.

The assembly area for the new line of vehicles is comprised of five different buildings, which includes a stamping plant, a body shop and final assembly area, paint shop, waste treatment area and about 1,500 ft of new electrical duct bank from a new switch house.

The project’s scale required early coordination of both facility and project utility integrations, thereby enabling a significant volume of material and equipment pre-ordering ahead of schedule to support the aggressive construction milestones. Design work began in mid-2021 and was ongoing when construction commenced in March 2022. The project completed in April 2025.

Crews setting the first piece of steel. Upon completion, Ford BlueOval City incorporates 77,000 tons of structural steel—the equivalent of the weight of eight Eiffel Towers.
Photo by Aerial Innovations SE

Procurement Through a Pandemic

Preconstruction and procurement proved to be especially daunting. From the start, the team immediately faced pandemic-related supply chain issues and escalations. Materials like stone, sand, concrete roofing, metal siding and structural steel, which traditionally have shorter procurement times, were affected significantly.

The project team had to develop and maintain an aggressive procurement strategy that included securing structural steel mill orders early in the design stages, finalizing the design of building components around available materials and developing a logistics plan that allowed for warehousing materials on site well in advance. To mitigate potential delays, the team constructed three concrete batch plants on site. Stone, lime and sand were warehoused to ensure timely fabrication of concrete.

Weather also factored into the equation. “During the job, the Mississippi River hit a historic low during a drought, and barges couldn’t get through,” Morgan recalls. “We had to find a new way to get gravel to the site with trucks and trains. So, even with a good plan, Mother Nature threw a monkey wrench in it.”

 

Massive Manpower

During the initial stages of preconstruction, the team’s labor force analysis revealed that at peak construction, the project would require about 6,000 workers. The team developed a strategy focused on attracting qualified labor to the site by implementing project incentives for in-town and out-of-town trades.

Additionally, the construction plan included collaboration with local and state authorities to ensure that workers would have a clean and safe site with climate-controlled lunch facilities and break areas. To that end, Walbridge engaged local and international labor union trade leaders to promote participation of all trades in the construction of BlueOval City.

“Our message was, ‘Come to work here and you’ll have a good experience,’” Morgan says. “‘It’s going to be a safe job, and you’ll make good money.’”

From the start, the project team was tasked to reduce costs as much as possible. It achieved that by reviewing previous projects as well as its lessons-learned database. The project team proposed and implemented several value engineering ideas targeting design and construction techniques.

In one example, plans were adjusted during construction to modularize piping into 40-ft-long racks, each with six pipes ranging in diameter from 12 in. to 24 in. Walbridge estimates that this saved up to 12 weeks on the schedule.

“We built thousands of feet of those,” Morgan says. “So we also kept labor off site, improved cleanliness and improved safety.”

 

Sizable Sitework

To prepare the 4,000-acre site, Walbridge issued its largest sitework contract ever. Although on most jobs the site contractor can work their own plan, Morgan says crews had to follow the sequence of work.

“We’d tell them that we need this pad first, then half of that pad, then another one a week after that,” Morgan recalls. “Balancing site logistics and planning was a colossal effort.”

The buildings are set on slab-on-grade pads with a mix of caissons, depending on specific structural requirements. All structures are steel buildings. Although Walbridge did some self-perform concrete and steel work, five steel erectors were contracted to complete the structures.

In total, crews worked 14 million hours with no fatalities and an EMR ratio below 1.0. At completion, the three-year project came in below budget and ahead of schedule.

“It was very daunting at the beginning, but we worked the plan and got everyone to execute,” Morgan says. “Hundreds of our people all had to do their job. They just had to do what they always knew how to do. I’m very proud of our team. No one got overwhelmed and over their skis. We’ve never done a project this big, but we know how to do it. There was just more of it.”