Walbridge

Owner:

Twin Creeks Technologies

Architect:

Ghafari Architects

Scope Of Work

Twin Creeks, a Silicon Valley-based manufacturer of crystalline-silicon solar panels, hired Walbridge to design-build the first stage of a planned multi-phase project in northern Mississippi, which included construction of an 88,000-square-foot facility, installation of two dozen distinct equipment systems, and lay out of a maze of utility connections.

Walbridge partnered with Yates Construction, to build the 100-megawatt manufacturing facility, which featured s 60 new, patented application processes. Inside the plant, Walbridge managed installation of 24 different equipment types, all of which are essential to the solar cell manufacturing process. If that wasn’t complicated enough, the project team then painstakingly connected each piece of equipment through a sophisticated mechanical system that includes 29 separate utility feeds.

As complicated as the project was, Walbridge maneuvered through it in timely fashion. Thanks to tools like building information modeling (BIM) and value analysis / value engineering (VA/VE), the $29 million project was completed in less than a year and at a slightly lower cost than anticipated.