Overview
- Fort Bliss held a ribbon-cutting Tuesday to open the first two of ten 3D-printed barracks on the base with the remaining buildings scheduled to come online in phases through the fall.
- The project was built under a roughly $62.8 million contract with ICON and used large-scale printers to place walls in 58 days of printing work, which Army officials compared to completing construction about four times faster than traditional methods.
- Army officials reported the project delivered roughly 9.3 percent cost savings versus U.S. Army Corps of Engineers benchmarks and estimated about $5.6 million saved in overhead.
- Once all ten buildings are finished they will hold up to 560 transient soldiers and are intended first for units returning from southwest border duty, including elements of the 101st Airborne Division.
- The concrete-based, energy-resilient structures include open-bay bunk layouts with individual outlets, lockers, extra washers and dryers, and a small gear-wash shower stall, and the Army says lessons from this largest DoD robotic-construction deployment will inform future projects at other posts such as Fort Polk.