The design portion of the project involved more than 250,000 man-hours of engineering, including the design of an 81,000 square-foot addition to the existing building, a new paint shop entrance bridge, conveyor enclosures, paving, fencing, rail relocation, cooling towers, switch gear sections, fire alarm systems, high bay lighting, ventilation rework, welder water system, compressed air systems and utilities distribution.
Construction was preceded by demolition of 2 million square feet of the facility's existing interiors. A major portion of existing tooling was tagged, saved and subsequently shipped for use in other GM plants. The demolition/construction schedule was set for 18 weeks.
At the end of 12 weeks, equipment installation was completed. The remaining six weeks were dedicated to equipment checkout, debugging and start-up. More than 700,000 square feet of concrete were poured, with half of the pour specified as super-flat to accommodate automatic guided vehicles in the body shop. The plant also included a maintenance monitoring automation system, computerized control conveyance systems and approximately 350 robots.
In addition to engineering and construction services, Fluor also provided more than 40 upgrade training courses to assist operators and maintenance personnel on the new automated equipment.