SSA National Service Center (project description as per SOM website)
Each month, the Social Security Administration (SSA) serves nearly 60 million Americans, delivering benefits to people of all ages and backgrounds. To support this essential function in the future, the SSA needed a new home for its primary data center. The LEED® Gold–certified National Support Center, set on 63 acres outside Washington D.C., met this need, achieving stringent sustainability and security criteria with a refined, enduring design.
Constructed of glass, aluminum, and precast concrete, an elegant two-story office building provides a welcoming environment for visitors and staff along with comfortable office and meeting facilities. A curving, dual-winged data center houses critical back-of-house operational infrastructure. Five acres of the site were reforested as part of the project while the entire site features native grasses and vegetation. Vital resource preservation elements were utilized, including low-irrigation meadows, photovoltaic panels that generate approximately 1 megawatt of electricity, and a rainwater harvesting and filtration system.
An innovative design-build arrangement streamlined design and construction. An enhanced Building Information Modeling (BIM) delivery process, including real-time, 3D modeling, minimized costs and compressed the project timeline. The result—a cost-effective, energy-saving facility—provides a secure home for data operations that enables the SSA to continue to deliver on its promises to current and future generations of beneficiaries.
