Sweden-based contractor Skanska has inked a deal with the Texas State University System to construct a new science, technology, engineering and math building at the University’s San Marcos campus, the company said in a press release shared with Construction Dive.
The eight-story, 155,900-square-foot building will house math and computer science departments, with space for teaching, labs, departmental offices and research labs. The project will also require site and utility improvements to support the new building.
Skanska said it will begin construction in June 2024 and complete the project in May 2026.
Just a week before it announced the new contract, Skanska reached a milestone on another Texas-based education project.
At Texas A&M University in College Station, the contractor topped out the new Wayne Roberts ‘85 Building, part of the Mays Business School. When finished, the building will become the centerpiece of the school’s new business education complex. The four-story, 82,500-square-foot facility will have a grand atrium, café, learning studios and huddle spaces.
To celebrate the steel topping out, teams signed the beam placed on the northeast corner of the building. Skanska expects to complete the project at the end of 2024 for opening in 2025.
Another large contractor recently delivered a major higher ed project. Bethesda, Maryland-based Clark Construction completed Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg Center facility in Washington, D.C., this fall.
Adjacent to the U.S. Capitol, the Bloomberg Center was once the Newseum, before Clark and JHU teamed up to overhaul the project. The pairing gutted aspects of the building and used temporary steel to buttress others. The roof couldn’t come off, however, so the construction crews couldn’t make use of a crane. Instead, the project team removed the facade.
The challenging nature of the buildout is the exact thing that drew the Clark team to the project, Matt Vaughn, project executive at Clark told Construction Dive.