DFAS Limestone is a tough but beautiful landscape. In all its remoteness, its residents enjoy its natural beauty, but also have to endure harsh winters as well.
To take advantage of the warmer spring weather, Limestone kicked off two major construction projects in mid-May at the Major Charles J. Loring Jr. building to make some major improvements.
Project one included the overhang loading dock area including overhang, trailer levelers and a dumpster storage area. Project two addressed aging sidewalks.
"These exterior features of the facility haven't been updated since the facility was constructed as the Loring Air Force Base hospital in 1986," according to Jamie Stephens, CDFM, chief, facilities, logistics, administrator, and security and is overseeing the project. "Wear, deterioration, safety and security were all factors," he explained.
Loading dock and overhang
"The new loading dock added a handicap ramp," Stephens said. "Disabled employees can now exit the second floor during emergency evacuation where currently they must use a Garaventa Lift and exit from the first floor," he explained.
According to Stephens, the loading dock overhang project included demolishing old loading dock/levelers, smoke shack and partial overhang. The project began though, with designing many new elements, including: a new loading dock with overhang, installation of new trailer levelers, fenced in dumpster location with blast proof wall on the facility side, fencing on two adjacent sides matching the current fencing and double fence gates for dumpster change-out on the side away from the facility, safety railings on all elevated surfaces, all electrical installation and connections needed to support dumpster operations at the new dumpster location.
"We had large drifts growing and hanging over the side of the roof. We had to close the one sidewalk as we estimated the drift was thousands of pounds," also, the waste and recycle dumpsters at the loading dock did not meet DoD standoff distance," Stephens said.
Sidewalks
"The sidewalk project was a little more straightforward," Stephens said.
Concept design services were consulted to redesign sidewalk layout to relocate sidewalks away from facility where practical, remove 10,010 linear sq. /ft. of existing concrete sidewalk and replace/install 10,050 linear sq. /ft. of sidewalk.
"The sidewalks are being relocated farther away from the building to remove falling ice and snow hazard to pedestrians," Stephens said.
The project included sidewalk reconfiguration, replacement of existing sidewalks and extending sidewalks to ensure safe and efficient egress from the DFAS facility and eliminate the risk of falling snow and ice onto pedestrians using the sidewalks.
The new sidewalks are also curb less, allowing DFAS employees to move around the facility much more easily than before.
Both projects are expected to be completed by July. Both projects cost a total $543K worth of improvements to the Limestone facility.