General Mills JFB Technical Center

THE PROJECT

Project Highlights

210,000 SF renovation and 40,000 SF addition to a building originally built in 1958
Includes laboratories, lab support, offices and pilot plant space for several hundred employees
Composite steel frame with a braced frame lateral system and concrete spread footings

General Mills James Ford Bell (JFB) Technical Center Addition and Renovation is an extensive, multi-phase campus integration project designed to meet the increased demands of innovation. As the company’s primary research and development facility, the 210,000-square-foot project includes a LEED certified analytical laboratory addition as well as a 40,000-square-foot addition with a mechanical penthouse over the majority of the building footprint. The addition connects each level, including the penthouse, to the existing JFB facility. The technical center features new and renovated laboratories, offices, and pilot plant space to integrate the company’s capabilities to a central location and foster a collaborative working environment to further drive research.

OUR IMPACT

CAREFUL COORDINATION

to retrofit existing structure

PHASED CONSTRUCTION

with minimized disruptions

MULTIPLE

bid packages

Service Provided

Structural engineering

OUR SOLUTIONS

Significant infrastructure and careful coordination was required to support the lab spaces and retrofit the existing structure. MBJ provided a lateral load path for the addition that could mitigate overloading the existing structure in a wind event. The building structure is composite steel framed with a braced frame lateral system. Concrete spread footings were used as the foundation system, with stepped footing elevations to accommodate varying geotechnical conditions across the building footprint. Due to the size of the mechanical equipment within the penthouse, our team utilized long-span conditions to eliminate the need for interior building columns while an extensive catwalk and access platform system was used for equipment access. The entire project required multiple bid packages and phased construction.