Mountainside Teleport Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Intelsat Global Service Corporation, which launched the world's first commercial communications satellite in 1965. This is the company’s fifth commercial teleport.
“Mountainside is supporting our GlobalConnex™ portfolio of services," said Kevin Mulloy, president of Intelsat Global Services Corporation. “We are leveraging the benefits of our global satellite network, integrating satellite transmission with a full service ground network that connects into major telecommunications hubs.”
Ellerbe Becket launched the project with an expert integrated team from its Washington, D.C. and Minneapolis offices to design the building’s exterior and interior. The team also provided structural engineering, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering services.
The Mountainside Teleport, as the name implies, was built on 55 acres in the Allegheny mountain ranges near Hagerstown. Building a high-tech facility from the ground up is never easy, especially under a tight schedule in the winter months. Among the design challenges were re-platting the site, adding utilities and constructing a new access road.
Despite the challenges, the data center building and teleport antennas were completed in five months, a new Ellerbe Becket construction record. “That’s about as close to ‘Internet time’ as the building, design and construction industry gets,” says Margaret Flinner, Ellerbe Becket’s project architectural director.
“Communication was key in this project,” says Flinner. “Intelsat articulated from the beginning what their goals were for this site, what the budget would allow, and when the project had to be completed. They also worked hard to get us the information we needed to make the project successful. We approached this project as a partnership between the two companies, working very hard together to accomplish their goals.”
Technology sharing helped the project move forward at a rapid pace. Using ProjectPoint, Ellerbe Becket shared documents over a project Web site, so Intelsat could view the most current specifications at any time. If any changes were required, it was faster and easier to add them to the plans and calculate the changes’ impact on the project budget.
The new building is scalable on-site, giving Intelsat the infrastructure to expand the facility as future market demands require. The building’s exterior was constructed using precast insulated wall panels and roof deck designed to withstand wind speeds up to 120 miles per hour. The overall structure was built to exceed the minimum code requirements for seismic resistance.
Inside the building, Ellerbe Becket designed amenities to support the employees who staff the building 24 hours a day. This included showers, an oversized break room, special chairs in the operations center that offer more comfort, and special indirect lighting in the operations center to reduce eyestrain and fatigue.
Intelsat, Ltd. offers telephone, corporate network, video and Internet solutions around the globe via capacity on 26 geosynchronous satellites in prime orbital locations. Customers in approximately 200 countries rely on Intelsat satellites and ground resources for quality connections, global reach and reliability. For more information, visit www.intelsat.com.
An innovator since its founding in 1909, Ellerbe Becket is a leader in architecture, engineering and the construction industry with office locations worldwide. Click here to read more about Ellerbe Becket’s mission critical expertise.
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