Industry News

The British Ministry of Defense has awarded Dyncorp International a $948-million contract to manage all of the non-military support for 130 army locations throughout England, Scotland, and Wales. The 10-year contract will assign up to 2000 employees and will include facilities management and range operations as provided by joint venture Landmarc Support Services. Dyncorp is a subsidiary of Computer Sciences Corp.

Construction has begun on the new Bindley Bioscience Center, a research building at Purdue University for their campus in West Lafayette, Indiana. The biosciences and engineering facility is one of five centers planned for a new $100-million Discovery Park addition to the West Lafayette campus.

Palomar Pomerado Health has selected Anshen + Allen of Los Angeles to design the $210-million expansion of Palomar Medical Center in Escondido, Calif. and the $63-million expansion of Pomerado Hospital.

Roswell, N.M.-based Strategic Data Systems is developing a facility capable of hosting 1 million gigabytes of data in in two former Atlas F nuclear missile silos. Comprising 1.2 million sf, the 22-floor facility will have 100 servers on each floor. The massive computer storage system will be protected by a structure built to withstand most natural and manmade disasters, and features four-foot-thick concrete walls, 4,000-pound steel doors, and a diesel-powered backup generator. The silos will employ sixty workers once operational.

Software firm PeopleSoft is constructing a 180,000-sf facility on 20 acres in Pleasanton, Calif. The $45-million project is expected to reach completion in the third quarter of 2003.