SPAWAR opens a $9.5 million data center on the Weapons Station

The Navy’s high-tech engineering command in the Charleston area opened a new data center last week that it says will help the service consolidate more than 100 Navy data centers.

SPAWAR Systems Center Atlantic cut the ribbon Oct. 7 on the 20,220-square-foot building at Joint Base Charleston-Weapons Station. The Navy put its cost at $9.498 million.

The center will play “a key role” in consolidating Navy data centers “to increase effectiveness and efficiency and to reduce costs while still meeting the Navy’s security and operational requirements,” the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command said in an announcement Tuesday.

The consolidation is expected to save money through fewer physical locations, lower power use and fewer data center management contracts, the Navy said.

The Navy’s IT chief cuts the ribbon

Terry Halvorsen, the Department of the Navy’s chief information officer, and Dave Weddel, assistant deputy chief of naval operations for information dominance, were the keynote speakers.

“This data center will be part of the Navy’s data center consolidation effort. Not only is this data center efficient, it’s green,” Halvorsen said, according to the Navy. “That is another big piece of what we want to do. We need to protect the environment and the resources that we have. This data center will help us do that.”

Weddel tied the project to the push for savings across the service. “The demand for IT efficiencies and demand for efficiencies at large across our Navy are increasing,” he said. Facilities like this one, he said, help the Navy “not only increase our IT efficiencies and reduce our spending in IT, but also build up a core of quality professionals.”

The building was designed to the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED silver standard, the Navy said. It linked the project to energy goals set in October 2009 by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, including a target that by 2020 the Navy will get at least half of its shore-based energy from alternative sources.

Others at the ribbon cutting included Capt. Mark V. Glover, the center’s commanding officer; Christopher Miller, its executive director; Rod Smith, deputy commander of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command; Gary Armstrong, a vice president of Suffolk Construction; and Pennie Bingham of the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce, according to the Navy’s photo captions.

Glover took command of SPAWAR Systems Center Atlantic on July 28, according to the command.

Part of a wider cutback

The Charleston center is part of a broader effort to cut the number of computer rooms the Navy pays to run.

In a July 20 memo, Halvorsen directed that officials moving data first look to Navy-owned centers, then to those run by other Defense Department organizations and last to commercial data centers, Nextgov reported. The publication said the Navy effort is part of a governmentwide White House push to close 800 data centers by 2015.

A SPAWAR spokesman, Steven Davis, said in July that the command operated three data centers, in San Diego, Charleston and New Orleans, Nextgov reported.

In a blog post in May, Halvorsen wrote that “the initial consolidation targets will provide true cost savings” through reductions in physical plant, power and data center management contracts, Nextgov reported. The publication did not give a dollar figure for the expected savings.

From groundbreaking to opening

The project broke ground in May 2010. At the time, The Post and Courier described it as a $9.5 million engineering laboratory that would house several dozen information technology engineers working on initiatives such as cyber security.

The newspaper reported that the need for the building stemmed from a 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission recommendation to move a SPAWAR detachment from Pensacola, Fla., to the Charleston area. SPAWAR said then that it would be staffed mostly by personnel who used to work in Pensacola, “as well as new hires/new positions created locally to support work requirements.”

“This lab represents another key element that will support the innovation we need to make best use of cyberspace for our forces,” Rear Adm. Michael Bachmann, who then commanded the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, said in a statement at the groundbreaking, The Post and Courier reported.

The Naval Facilities Engineering Command awarded Suffolk Construction a $9.5 million design-build contract for the data center, with completion expected by June 2011, Engineering News-Record reported in July 2010. The building opened a few months later than that target.

A big local employer

SPAWAR Systems Center Atlantic was formed in September 2008 by consolidating the former SPAWAR Systems Centers in Charleston, Norfolk, Va., and New Orleans, Defense Industry Daily reported in 2009.

The Post and Courier described the local operation at the 2010 groundbreaking as a high-tech electronic procurement hub for the Navy and other federal customers. It employed roughly 3,300 federal civil service workers and 9,000 private-sector workers, most of whom report to the Weapons Station, the newspaper reported.