IMEG Corp. will provide engineering design and services for the new National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF). The firm will work as a sub-consultant to OZ Architecture, which was awarded the contract for the federal project by the U.S. General Services Administration. 

The new facility will be located at the Denver Federal Center in Lakewood, CO, where it will replace the existing NSF-ICF, which opened in 1993. Like the current facility, the new ICF will store and curate meteoric ice cores recovered from glaciated regions of Antarctica, Greenland, and North America, preserving their integrity in a long-term, state-of-the-art repository. The new facility also will provide scientists with a laboratory in which to conduct examinations and measurements on the cores, which are recovered for a variety of investigations. 

“We are honored and excited to work with OZ Architecture, the NSF, and the GSA on this one-of-a-kind, highly complex, mission critical facility,” said Client Executive Ken Urbanek, who will lead the team working out of IMEG’s Denver office. “Our firm’s vast science and technology expertise—plus our experience with the GSA and NSF on projects such as the infrastructure update at McMurdo Station in Antarctica—puts us in a great position to deliver quality design on the new Ice Core Facility.” 

IMEG will provide structural, MEP, fire protection, and technology design for the project, in addition to rapid performance modeling and energy modeling. The firm also will provide 3D laser scanning of the existing space, a “building within a building” that the new facility also will occupy. Critical infrastructure design will include fire protection with a unique clean agent system, and an extreme level of stand-by power and redundancy since the facility must always remain operational. In addition, a specialty designer identified by IMEG will provide a transcritical CO2 refrigeration system, an environmentally friendly technology that uses CO2 as the refrigerant. 

Construction of the $9M, approximately 20,000-square-foot facility is expected to begin in 2024 and be complete by 2026. 

Learn more about the National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility on the NSF-ICF website.