“We have to come up with a flexible design while being able to foresee into the future unknown capacities, all while managing costs and schedule for the customer,” says Nathan Speanburg, senior director of construction for DPS. “It’s quite the conundrum.”

The NanoFab Reflection project will be part of a larger semiconductor research campus in Albany. N.Y..
Image courtesy NY Creates

NanoFab Reflection will be the first addition in more than a decade to the NanoTech Complex, a cluster of similar buildings dedicated to semiconductor science. Owned and operated by NY Creates, a public-private partnership for expanding the R&D industry in New York state, the building will add about 30% more clean room space to the campus. A major component of its inaugural equipment will be a cutting-edge device for etching microchip circuits with ultraviolet light.

The four-story building, a 900-car parking structure and a switchyard upgrade has a $614-million budget made up of funds from New York state, which is investing a total of $1 billion toward the construction and new microchip equipment. Pursuing the contract as a joint venture let both Gilbane and DPS lend their expertise. Before DPS was bought by Arcadis in 2022, the firm worked primarily in semiconductor facility engineering, procurement, construction and tool installation. The DPS team needed a partner with better local resources, Speanburg says. Gilbane has handled projects of similar complexity and cost in upstate New York before, but it is trying to work more with semiconductors and advanced technology, says Christian Calabrese, a company senior project executive.

When the building is complete, companies and other organizations can pay to have NY Creates conduct research on their behalf or send their own teams to Albany to use the equipment.
Photo courtesy NY Creates

Difficult Design

As with other R&D projects, the question marks surrounding what the site might host now and in the future made for a difficult design phase.

“A lot of the budget problems with an R&D facility are when you design to maximize capacity,” says Speanburg. “It does come with a price, because you’re adding more and more to the building.”

Ceiling height, power demand, chemical supply and other factors were discussed by the client and contractors as they planned how to build a site that could adapt to unforeseen needs. “We went through several value engineering efforts with this customer to keep the budget in check,” he adds.

The JV knew it had to decide quickly about transformer upgrades. Power-related procurement packages take first priority, he says, since projects he and Calabrese have worked on lately have needed some form of upgrade, particularly in upstate New York. The transformers, 45 MVA models replacing two 35 MVA versions, were ordered from a Korean manufacturer. When the models were chosen in 2023, they were going to arrive about six months earlier than a domestic option. Site designs were about 30% complete when some of the first procurement packages went out. The team broke ground in January 2024 when design was 60% done.

The construction site is sandwiched between two existing buildings on campus. NanoFab Reflection will attach to its northern neighbor—a structure of precast concrete. NY Creates wanted to continue with precast.

But when specs about the microchip equipment came in, the floor rating in the clean room had to go up beyond the industry standard of 500 lb per sq ft. Equipment coming to the site needed ratings at 750 and even 1,000 lb per sq ft at spots near particularly important gear. Paired with the goal of having as few columns in the clean room as possible, the all precast request got challenging. To make it work, the design team went with higher-rated waffle slabs and double T spans, each 128 ft long and over 90 tons per pick. “Those were unheard of,” Speanburg says.

The JV had to organize construction around a single entry and exit point because the worksite had existing buildings on three sides.
Photo courtesy NY Creates

Good Vibes

All construction had to happen while other campus employees were working with vibration-sensitive equipment in clean rooms nearby. The gap between the new facility and the building to its north is less than a foot and a half, Calabrese says. The team mounted vibration monitors onto the neighboring building to make sure that the drill rigs driving 120-ft foundation piles would not cause disruptions. Teams tackled installing the new transformers after normal business hours. Crews used hand-controlled dollies to skate the D7 bulldozer-size equipment about one-half mile from the staging site to their final locations.

Offsite fabrication also helped the project handle the tight confines and demands for minimal disruption. The wet mechanical contractor put together runs of pipe up to 60 ft long for the utility building—housing the chiller plant and other mechanical equipment—before construction. Installation of the 36-in. and 60-in.-dia pipes was coordinated with the steel erection, which saved money and time on field welding, Calabrese says.

A similar approach also extended to parts of the clean room building. In microchip facilities, “subfabs” host all pipes for utilities, chemicals, gases and waste removal that feed up into the clean room above. Instead of having all the equipment stick-built on site, contractors put together a bid package for a modular subfab utility rack that could be assembled in a controlled environment.

Danforth, an EMCOR-owned company, assembled nearly 92,000 lb of ductwork into 200 subfab segments, each stretching 24 ft. The pieces were delivered to the site and installed during five months.

The modular installation was a new approach for the NanoTech Complex, says Ramin Dabiri, senior director of facilities and infrastructure for NY Creates, and it helped with site safety, cost reduction and time management. The subfab piping is also slightly oversized for what’s needed today in anticipation of higher demands of later equipment.

With construction more than 85% complete, the team plans to deliver the project by year-end.

With the project more than 85% complete, the design and construction team notes its safety record, which Speanburg describes as “world class.” There have been few incidents and no deaths over what is now more than 1 million safe workhours. “We try to ‘subtle-brag’ as much as we can,” Calabrese says, “but [the safety record did not happen] by accident.” A large facility with similar safety needs was last built in the area eight years ago. Members of local union halls work on commercial sites, but return of a project with such particular concerns and tight timeline meant safety refreshers would be needed.

“Our safety orientation, our walks and everything we do is bringing them back into the fold of semiconductor safety programs,” Speanburg says. “If you don’t do it every day, you have to be refreshed.” The partnership planned how to assess subcontractors and their safety programs before any firms were allowed on the bidder list, and they also hired two safety professionals for additional onsite training.

Progress on the building means that NY Creates can turn its attention to other tasks. The first and most complicated contract for assembling microchip equipment has been awarded, says Christopher Borst, vice president of technology and infrastructure at NY Creates. Site preparations have begun for a sequence of cargo planes and semitrucks that will deliver different pieces of the machine, which will be about the size of a double-decker bus once assembled.

While NY Creates wants NanoFab Reflection to be a flexible space, it also wants more room overall. The organization plans to add another 100,000 sq ft of clean room space to the complex over the next decade.