General Motors Vehicle Engineering Center (VEC)

The General Motors (GM) Vehicle Engineering Center is an office building and design facility that includes a new eight-story, 1.2 million square-foot building and the renovation of an adjacent three-story, one million square-foot building. The new tower addition is a structural steel frame clad with a striking aluminum and glass unitized curtain wall system. The facility houses over 8,000 design engineers supported by the latest technology systems, labs, the famous GM modeling shop and ancillary facilities.

As a signature building for the GM high-tech design-engineering group, the facility uses state-of-the-art technology throughout. Systems were designed to be energy efficient, featuring secondary pumps and major air handler fan units that are modulated on an as needed basis and lighting systems that are operated remotely or triggered by timers or motion sensors.

The new tower featured an innovative ductless under-floor HVAC system throughout the typical office floor. This plenum space also contains a perimeter fin tube heating system, fiber optic and Cat 5e voice/data lines providing maximum flexibility and reliability for high-tech open office space, all within 14 inches under the raised lightweight concrete access flooring. The system allows cooling air temperature to operate at a higher temperature than normal, requiring less chiller energy use. In its entirety, the new engineering facility boasts over 600,000 square feet of raised flooring, 223 miles of wire, 125 miles of acoustic ceiling grid, 61 miles of electrical conduit and 15,000 sprinkler heads.

With over 2,000 occupants, the existing portion of the building needed to remain open and fully functional to support both continued automotive development and GM worldwide manufacturing. Detailed coordination, preparation and completion of demolition, excavation, sheeting and shoring, pile foundations, new construction and phased moves in and around the 45-year-old building were significant challenges to the project team in an effort to minimize client disruption. Located in a campus setting, the construction project required detailed, significant pre-planning of traffic and campus detours, planned utility outages, along with special staging and material delivery coordination. In addition, GM security required strict guidelines requiring worker registration, inspections and access restrictions to secure areas.